


Building Cogency

by rev02a



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adoption, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale isn't angry but he's disappointed, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Destiny, Fledglings, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Aziraphale (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ineffable Bureaucracy, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Is this a kissing book?, Kid Fic, M/M, Magic, Magic and Science, Nature Versus Nurture, Other, They lived history, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), War in Heaven (Good Omens), builders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26723671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rev02a/pseuds/rev02a
Summary: Builders were created to form the universe. Once they finish with this task, the Almighty must create makework for them. The idea of lifecycles is born and fledglings with it. They serve in the angelic nursery until God's questions arise: were builders always meant to become demons, or did She foresee it and force them into the role?The War in Heaven makes Her scrap the idea of lifecycles in the Host. Somehow, 6000 plus years later, humans use dark and unparalleled magic to pull a living angel fledgling from the firmament. Aziraphale and Crowley are about to become parents, while continuing to protect their dominion of Earth by destroying this dangerous magic.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I NEED TO FINISH SOME STORIES BEFORE I START MORE.
> 
> Anyway, here's an another adventure story where Crowley loves kids. Go figure.

Humans misunderstand angels. One only needs to look to art to see how badly this happens. Cherubs are presented as fat-faced, naked babies. In reality, they look like The Almighty took assorted mammals and fed them into a wood-chipper. Whatever wasn’t too mangled was glued together and became an angel. Other angels were mislabeled as wheels, eyes, and wings—but that is only because these early viewers had never seen a combustion engine. (The Almighty is a petrol head, for sure.)

When She created Her angels, She thought about them and they popped into existence looking exactly as She needed them to. There were no baby angels. She had no need for infants. She needed hands, ready to work, and armed with their tasks. Early on, She pulled Gadreel from the firmament and blew life and knowledge into him. His many golden eyes popped open and he spun to life.

“Mother!” he exclaimed and cartwheeled about. “What if we _split an atom_?”

She’d made him filled with wonder and creativity. Like her other builders, he was a natural at math and design. However, unlike the other builders, She’s given him an extra dose of curiosity. Gadreel never stopped asking questions. It was what made his designs and creation in the heavens so wonderful. He tinkered with temperature and color, propulsion, and orbits. He took Her visions and mixed them with Her new sciences. From this, he showed how endothermic reactions and recycled carbon could form into wondrous forms. He would spin back to Her side, usually so excited that he would jettison into Her throne room.

“Mother!” he calls, excited as a child. “I think we could make a binary system! The maths for the gravity will work and—“

“Gadreel!” Gabriel shouts, all his wings and wheels turning in anger. “You must give the Almighty the praise She deserves!”

And while, privately, She believed that Gadreel already had, She also knew that Gabriel and his diligence to the rules were stable and necessary among the Host. The Almighty watched Gadreel try to move out of what She privately thought of as builder-brain and into a more professional persona.

“Ah, um, yes. Glory on most high, hallelujah, etcetera— _Mother_! What if we started with one star, but instead we _increased_ the gravity and forced the star to split?”

The archangel Lucifer spun closer, intrigued. Her Morningstar. Her Lightbringer. Oh, yes, they could do wonders together!

“How do we increase gravity though? It’s a constant,” Lucifer inquired, curious. From some of the other angels, Baal spins forward.

“Well,” they suggest, their pistons firing and eyes squinting thoughtfully, “on some of the planets I’ve been running the numbers on, the gravity is different. That has to do with mass, of course. Would we make one of these stars more massive? Would they circle another object of greater mass?”

Gadreel’s eyes open in delight. “Oh! A star that orbits something else! Could I do that?” he asks Her, vibrating with delight.

She smiles. “Do the maths. If the sums work, then, certainly, Gadreel.”

And Lucifer and he spin out the door throwing around rules about how light waves move. Baal rotates after them, calling out additional numbers and formulas and they bicker as they leave the throne room. Oh, Her builders. They’re so creative.

Gabriel watches them go with frowning eyes. “They just made a decision about creation, Mother.”

The Almighty shrugs. “Did they? I gave them knowledge. I gave them creativity.”

He fluffs up his feathers. “But it’s not to Your Plan.”

She smiles and runs her fingers through his many wheels. “Who says it’s not?”

The builders’ tastes of free will are what will create different sorts of questions in time. She does not see it yet, but She will. In the many millions of years that follow, the team of builders construct and design. She does not see them as often as She did in those early days. Then, all at once, they return.

Lucifer flutters in and shines brightly, “Mother. We’ve built a star nursery. The universe is completely self-sustaining now.”

“Wonderful news!” Gabriel heralds.

Baal blinks their many eyes slowly, tired. “All the planets are designed to the specifications we set. Some of the maths got… difficult. Please forgive the delay, Mother.”

She waves this away, like chasing smoke from the throne room. “I am pleased, Baal. The time was well spent if they are made well. And I have little doubt that you’ve done your best work for my glory.”

Baal preens. “And so I have, My Lord.”

Gadreel spins uncertainly in the back. He’s made stars and nebulas. He’s worked with the Lightbringer to make sure that they burn for eons.

“Gadreel?” She calls and he motors forward like an engine belt spinning.

“Mother?”

She smiles gently. “Why are you so quiet? It’s unlike you—and I should know. I formed you with my own hand.”

His feathers ripple with uncertainty. “I just… there is nothing else to _make_. What is my purpose now? What do I do now?”

Baal looks equally uncertain. Lucifer’s eyes are split between watching Her on the throne and his siblings at his side. All of the builders are there and all shadowed by this uncertainty. Millions of years have passed (although no one had thought about that yet) since Her first designs. She looked over what they had built: chemicals and galaxies and plasma and weight.These were mostly tangible. She wanted something different.

She called together her archangels and shared Her new plan: the intangible. Family, She suggested, and love. Care. Safety. Warmth. Growth and development. And from this came the development of physical shapes. Angels were fitted with a way to contain their energy. She designs these Herself and each angel matches how She created them. The builders try to help, but She refuses—She wants to craft them each by hand.

Gabriel has a strong jaw, Baal has tiny features, and Gadreel long auburn hair. She smiles as they inhabit these new physical forms. As she sees them begin to learn to move these new limbs, the next stage of Her plan begins. She begins with the frog—egg to tadpole to tadpoles with two legs to tadpoles with four legs to froglet to mature frog. The angels rejoice. Her builders study and discuss. She sees how they long to have a new project.

She gives them one. To the entire Host, She explains about the newest of their ranks. These new angels would transition through stages too— _change will be introduced_ , She suggested.

Some called them infants, others call them fledglings. She didn’t care what they were called; She was more interested in the way these new ones _changed_. They became the first group of developmental stages that would later become evolution. At first, the builders are excited. They bring in numbers and values.

She laughs, “Life is not a formula!”

And they skitter back away from the throne room with their plans and calculations. With nothing to do, they stand together in groups. The Almighty realizes an oversight: She created them to build, but now there is nothing more _to_ build.

She puts them into the nursery. Some angels use the time to teach the fledglings to sing the celestial harmonies. Some tell the infants the stories of creation. The builders measure their growth and play with them—but they have too much time. They talk. They discuss.

Dissent grows.

Her plan is not as successful as She’d hoped and She knows it. It is especially obvious in her curious little misfit builder.

Gadreel struggles around the other angels. While the other builders become angry, he enjoys the time with the fledglings. He tucks their tiny bodies into his wings and flies them out to the edges of space. They see the dark expanses of the universes. He reads to them from the mathematical calculations that he used to create binary stars. He takes them to see the tadpoles. He listens to the other builders but doesn’t seem to know what to make of their discussions. Sometimes he nods along, in complete agreement and other times flinches back in horror.

She watches him and knows that things must change. Of course, She knew this point would come. The Fallen must fall at _some_ point. For Her, the worst part is trying to determine if She forced all Her builders to be future demons by giving them their jobs. Without something to build, did She cement their future as the Fallen?

It hurts too much to think about. To hide from the sting, She introduces the idea of humanity with their lifecycle. And the Host is awed.Well, the builders aren’t. They lean together and whisper. She ignores it (or so She tells Herself).

When She next goes to the nursery and pulls the fledglings from the firmament, the first seeds of rebellion begin. Later, She’ll realize that She only has Herself to blame.

“This one is Aziraphale,” She comments, looking at the new angel that Baal holds. “He will be a soldier.”

The builders look to one another. Gadreel asks quietly, “Mother? What is a ‘soldier’?”

She looks at him and sighs. “Enough with the questions, Gadreel.”

He frowns, chastened, and looks down at the little angel in his arms. “And this one, Mother?”

She looks at him in irritation but answers him. “That is Nakir. She is a soldier.”

Another builder gestures to baby Zadkiel. “Is she also a soldier?”

She frowns at each of the builders in turn. Maybe placing Gadreel with the infants was a terrible idea. All the builders are much closer now, not spread across the infinite sky working on independent projects. And, now, in these close quarters, they talk. Irritatingly, they’re _all_ asking questions now.

“Yes. The entire bunch—soldiers. Uriel will sort it out.” And She points out Samandiriel, Cassiel, and Sariel.“They’ll lead platoons.”

And She sees the way Gadreel bites his lip to keep his questions in. Lucifer holds Cassiel and fluffs her tiny downy feathers. He looks up to Her and then back to the fledgling.

“What is it, my Lightbringer?” She sighs. When he doesn’t answer, She commands him, “Walk with me.”

He hands Cassiel to Gadreel and hurries to Her side. “Mother, platoons. _Soldiers_. Humanity. Did you,” he hesitates, “create humanity just for the Host to fight?”

She stops suddenly. “Absolutely not. Soldiers are needed for the inevitable.”

Lucifer stares at Her and She feels his multitude of hidden eyes open. She knows the moment he makes the leap from fledglings to rebellion.

“None of the Host would _ever_ …” he whispers, horrified.

She looks away, feeling something like a dagger twist in Her heart. “Wouldn’t they, my morningstar?”

He steps back, further hurt and terrified. “What are you saying, Mother?”

She stares at him and lets Her glory sear into him. It lights up all his frustration and anxiety at being useless now that the galaxies are made. He stumbles out of his physical form and spins before her, pistons firing.

“The builders aren’t your enemy, Mother!”

She softens. “Of course not, Lucifer.” And She departs to listen to those angels who are content to sing Her praises day and night. The archangel returns to the nursery and calls the builders to him.

She tries to mend the wound. She calls her builders together and asks them to create nests.

“For family units of angels!” She produces ideas of nestmates and raising these fledglings as pairs or trios. “Consider the bonds they’d create. New ideas: romantic and familial love.”

These new bonds are not something that can be mapped and diagramed, but the builders latch onto nest designs. For the first time in too long, the builders giggle and spin about throwing around numbers and blueprints. They meet with other groups and design new customs that center on the nests and fledgling needs.

It can’t last. After all, a nest is only a home. It can only be so prescriptive. With this project complete, the builders are listless once again. Lucifer invites other groups of angels to inspect the nests and he speaks on the future.

“We’ll have the option to choose a nestmate—“

“Choose? She won’t match us with someone?” a Virtue asks.

Lucifer is actually rather excited, “It’s a test run of free will, if you will! A chance for us to experience the human element—“

“That’s blasphemy!” Other angels challenge and point at the builders. “They were given choices on designs. Look at them now, speaking heresy.”

The builders spend more time in the nursery in bunches. They whisper but become silent when anyone else approaches. Lucifer looks hunted. The others are not much better. She tells Herself that it’s for the best. There must be balance.

The platoon leader fledglings grow and She only replaces them with one more clutch. Instead, knowing that rebellion is coming, She pulls fully grown soldiers from the firmament. The builders watch this with weary resignation. They know that She sees them as ripe for war. They know that She thinks they’re separate from the rest of the Host. As a result, they pull further away.

They’re not the only ones who notice The Almighty’s change. Other angels feel that She is being unfair and they sympathize with the builders. The Host is divided in half. She pulls more soldiers from the firmament when She sees the numbers.The archangels worry. Lucifer avoids the others as much as possible. Concerned for her absent brother, Michael comes to Her. She bows before The Almighty one day.

“Mother,” she says, “Lucifer is speaking to the Host. He says that you’re giving preference to some angels and ignoring others. He suggests that you prefer humans over the builders and those who support their plight.

“I think you can stop this, My Lord. I think if you address them all and bring us back together—“

“—no, Michael, the divide is too deep. We will cull the instigators!” And She calls for Gabriel. He sounds the trumpet and Her faithful take up sword and shield. She gives Michael a sacred duty—to strip the unworthy of Her love.

The battle is more terrible than any She had dreamed of. She awaits the news from Her throne. Michael strikes them down and She feels them fall. When the pain is too great, She walks to the nursery. She will hold her innocent fledglings and feel their adoration.

There, in the nursery, is Gadreel. He reaches out of his physical form to hold all of the little ones. They sob as they feel Grace striped from the builders and their support. Gadreel is not much better. Tears roll down his cheeks and his golden eyes stare at her in accusation.

“Mother?” he whispers and rocks a little one. “Can we stop this?”

She prepares to answer him when Baal runs into the room, sword dripping golden blood. They drops to their knees before The Almighty and prostrates themself there.

“My Lord, I have disobeyed you. Forgive me—“

But She is an angry deity. She reaches into Baal’s form and yanks Her Grace out. Her love disappears like smoke and the ground below Baal opens. They scream and fall, their petite, golden wings burning.

“Baal!” Gadreel cries, but then recoils and tucks the infants closer. He will not look at The Almighty. “Why did you do that? They made a mistake and…”

He looks up at her in sheer anger. She has never seen such a look on his face. He stands and tucks the little angels into a swaddle and around each other. Then he kneels before Her.

“Will you forgive us?” he asks, heartbroken. She grits Her teeth and reaches into his being. As the ground gives out from below him, She sees a quick spark of disbelief cross his face before resignation replaces it. She holds his share of Her love in Her hand and watches as Gadreel falls from Heaven. As he does, She places an extra curse on him for his cheek.

_Crawl on your belly. Eat dust._

The fledglings scream in terror. She looks at them in distress and anger and then casts them back into the firmament. Then, vindictively, She wipes their memory from the Host. No one will remember that last clutch.

When the remaining Host return to Her, battle-weary and hurting, Gabriel kneels before Her.

  
“Mother—“ he begins, but She cuts him off.

“You may no longer call me that.”

Gabriel casts a concerned look at Michael. They only call Her “The Lord” or “The Almighty” from that time on. None of the remaining Host is surprised when She announces the flood or any of the other punishments that She dreams up. Perhaps those who were Her builders would be, but not those who saw her after the Fall. Her face turns from creation and onto destruction.

-

Like mirror images, Gadreel watched Baal fall from Heaven first, and Beelzebub saw Crawly hit the ground in Hell. They are bent in on themselves, curled, and burning when he makes eye contact. He flickers between a snake and angelic being as if his corporation cannot decide which form to inhabit. Like the rest of the fallen angels, he writhes. All around them is the smell of sulfur, burnt feathers, and blood. Former angels call out for mercy, for friends, and for Her.

Crawly loops around himself, hiding his burnt wings in his black coils. Beelzebub crawls toward him, digging their fingers into the jagged rocks that line the sulfur pits.

“The infants?” they ask, trying to look about for them but unable to move due to pain.

“In Heaven,” he hisses, and they collapse in relief. He rolls belly-up, twisting over and again, part skin and part scale.

Lucifer rises above them, changed. He retains enough of his builder powers to alter his appearance. Crawly, he says, inspires him.

“She meant this as a curse, but we shall claim it and wear it as a badge of honor.” Goat horns grow and curl from his head. His fingers lengthen into talons and his skin reddens. He is a new sort of beast.

He draws from all the creatures that repulsed any angel during their builds: amphibians, fish, insects, and reptiles. He infuses these characteristics into the empty hole where She ripped Her grace and love. It harvests their communal anger. In time, Lucifer is named Satan and King of Hell. It’s a mockery of their hallowed halls and their eons of designing and calculating.

Beelzebub calculates the numbers and formulas for drawing imps from the sulfurs. They're another empty shadow compared to fledglings. These are not taught to sing or see, but to hurt and maim. In fact, the depths of the underworld warp the former-builders into their polar opposites. They long for destruction and ruin; they no longer look for the balance of equations or the magic of science in action. Some flourish in these new ways, feeding on their anger and hurt: Hastur and Ligur do well.

The leaders of the builders though, while still in leadership, lack this obsession. Satan locks himself away. He claims he cannot stand to be groveled over anymore, but really he’s unable to see them rend what he loved to build. Dagon, once Tasaphal, hides in the files much as she did in blueprints. Beelzebub creates categories and spreadsheets and rules, hoping to hide their feelings about their new existence.Crawly escapes to Eden and makes trouble. He fits in among his fellow former-builders even less now. He might find what he needs in the Garden.

-

Crowley remembers much more of Heaven than he likes to admit. Once he and Beelzebub talked about its nursery in Romania over Turkish coffee lighted with _kaymak_. Neither said the specific words, but they know. They’d wondered aloud about the outcome of piles of calculations or notes. They both skated around mentioning the fledglings that they reared. It’s no wonder that when the coffee ran out, they switched to _tuica_.

Aziraphale was one of Baal’s. Sometimes he wonders what Beelzebub thought when they faced off with their errant Principality protege. Maybe they were a little proud—after all, Aziraphale could be a little shit sometimes and Beelzebub was a shit ninety-percent of the time. It doesn’t really matter now. Ineffable or otherwise, the war is postponed (forever, he hopes) and Crowley is enjoying his retirement.

He is nestled in the bend of Aziraphale’s knees with his elbows resting on the angel’s hip. He absently scrolls through Twitter, but it’s mostly for show. He’s angel watching but trying not to be obvious about it.

Aziraphale is reading _Moll Flanders_ again—Defoe was a fantastic satirist, but Crowley hates these conversion stories as much as Aziraphale enjoys them. Watching Aziraphale read almost makes up for Defoe being a stupid pamphlet writer. He studies each page and makes little expressions and sounds as he observes something new in his rereading. Crowley once asked him if he ever annotated these new discoveries. The very suggestion of marking up a text led to a solid minute’s worth of micro-expressions that ranged from disgust to disbelief. Crowley has never asked again.

Right now, however, Aziraphale’s eyes rove the page with a tiny wrinkle between his brows. No doubt Moll just found out that she’s married to her own half-brother and has sent him into some sort of panicky fever. Aziraphale likes that sort of drama. He buys grapes and enjoys the show. Crowley rolls his eyes good-naturedly in the evening lamplight.

Then something changes. It’s not exactly like when Adam named Dog, but it’s not unlike it either. It’s world-changing. This time, pain radiates through the air. It’s otherworldly but perceptible to any and all who are near enough to experience it.Crowley jumps up, gets his long legs tangled in Aziraphale’s, and falls face-first off the sofa. The angel isn’t in a much better condition. He’s on his feet and trying to draw a divine sword from the ether that he does not have.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale gasps, grabbing the demon by the underarm and hauling him to his feet. “That feels divine. Can you sense it too?”

“What? Of course, I can! I’m not an idiot—jus’ a demon. S’not the same thing, angel.” He practically snarls. Crowley flicks his tongue out and tastes the shivers of pure misery. “It feels… it feels like the war.”

Aziraphale fidgets, twisting his fingers in his watch fob. “No, the airfield felt nothing like this—“

“—The Great War in Heaven, angel. Before I fell. It felt like this.”

Aziraphale looks behind him and out the windows into the street. Humans cannot feel what they do, but they do experience nameless dread and panic. They pick fights with one another and run about, often looking back over their shoulders nervously.

Crowley rubs his shoulders, but the sense of hunted unease will not leave him. “Right,” he decides and grabs the Bentley keys from his pocket.

“I think we’ll need something faster than a motor, my dear boy. It feels… _immediate_.” Aziraphale mimes snapping and Crowley returns his keys to his jacket pocket.

Another pulse of emotion surges through the very air of the world. And Crowley knows it immediately: _a fledgling_. It shouldn’t be possible; Aziraphale had repeatedly said that no infant angels had been around in ages. Then again, who knows what they’re doing up there after the war was canceled. Outside of wearing Aziraphale’s body, Crowley hasn’t been in Heaven in a long time.Still, panic grips him—he can feel the holy fear that the little one is casting out.

“I think I can get us close to the source,” Aziraphale says, sounding slightly unsure. “If it’s divine, I should be able to—“

“I can lock onto it. _Fear_ is ‘spooky’,” he holds out his arm to Aziraphale, who seems reassured. The angel tucks into his side. “Right, hold on.”

And he opens his wings and steps into his rarely used eternal powers. Once, he was a builder. Now, he’s just a garden variety demon. She might have cast him out, but She left him with some abilities with the sciences. Obviously, he can still cast demonic miracles, but this is beyond that. He bends space and time around them. Beelzebub and Lucifer might still be able to do this too, but they don’t come top-side often.

When they finish stepping forward, they’re in Holyrood Park at Arthur's Seat, the top of a dormant volcano. Wind whips around them and the night is broken by torches that burn into the darkness. A grimoire lays in the torchlight, its pages flapping in the wind. Chalk and salt sigils make concentric rings and candles light the directional points. Six humans kneel and bow on the ground, ringing the smallest ritual circle. In its center is a bloody and beaten fledgling. Crowley lets some of his demonic nature loose and stalks forward hissing. His scales flash and his talons sharpen. Matching his pace, Aziraphale glows with holy wrath.

“What have you done?” the angel shouts, outraged. He leans down and grabs the _athame_ that’s been left outside the circles. He glares at the blade and it gives a _whoosh!_ and is a flame.

He slices the chalk line open and kicks dust over where he’s cut. Crowley slips into this circle right behind him, using each slice like a doorway. They move in tandem, two sides of the same coin, as they dance closer to their goal.

“We’re coming, little one!” Crowley hisses, low and dangerous.

The humans are in the middle of some sort of power ritual—the kind that Crowley hasn’t seen since deals with the devil were en vogue. Even then, few of them stank of evil in this way. The idea of cutting into an angel makes Crowley shutter. The fact that these sadists were willing to hurt a baby makes his teeth sharpen.

It won’t matter when he’s done with them. He is a demon after all. He can make them pay for eternity.

This ritual binds the mortals in some sort of magic haze. They’re not aware of either the angel or the demon’s presence until Aziraphale cuts the chalk line that rings directly behind them. Two of the humans blink as if shaken awake from a dream. One screams hysterically and another falls dead.That leaves the other two as rage machines. They’re powered on ethereal, innocent blood and furious at being cut from their drug. Aziraphale makes the last cut in the earth and then faces off with these two humans.

“Angel? You got this?” Crowley asks, his eyes not leaving the wounded fledgling one circle away from him.

“Oh, my darling, this is _well_ within my wheelhouse.” Crowley looks away to avoid being blinded by holy light. He kicks more dust over the circle’s line and jumps over it. Behind him, mortals scream in terror and are suddenly silenced. He doesn’t look back.

The infant curls into the fetal position when he approaches. He tries to let his demonic exterior fade, but his anger keeps his scales present. He knows it must be frightening to a holy being, so he tries to temper this side of himself down. Crowley sinks to his knees and reaches out one finger. The talon sinks back into his occult form and a human finger replaces it. He touches the infant’s broken wing softly.

“Easy, little one,” he whispers. The fledgling mews and turns terrified brown eyes on him.

“Hush, now,” he whispers. He holds his hands over her and draws on his power to heal her.

Nothing happens. His eyes fly open and he takes in her multiple injuries. Dust mixes with golden blood all over her arms, legs, and torso. She lays naked on her back with her tiny gray wings bent beneath her. Carved into her tiny middle are looped sigils.

Crowley still sees magic users these days. He sees their sigils of community and healing, as well as those personally chosen by believers to strengthen themselves.

These that cut into holy, angelic skin are nothing like those. These are ancient, forgotten symbols. This is the sort of magic that could kill someone immortal. The fact that these could hurt Aziraphale brings his scales back to the surface of his skin again. He takes a deep breath and snorts heavily out through his nose.

Crowley shucks off his leather jacket and lays it on the dirt. Behind him, all has gone quiet. Crowley hunches over and tucks his hand at the base of the baby’s head and the other under her hips.

“Hold on, I know this doesn’t feel good,” he whispers as he transfers her into the makeshift swaddle. He rambles on in a soothing tone, hoping to ease her mind. “You’ll need some holy healing, that’s all. Sometimes demonic miracles don’t mix well with your lot. Aziraphale says it’s like olive oil on holy water, which makes me wonder why olive oil is demonic according to him. I was always partial to it, so maybe that’s it.”

He tries to fold her wings against her back so that he can tuck the jacket all around her. She whimpers in pain, so he stops.

“Angel,” he calls and Aziraphale walks to his side. “Heal her. I’ll sort them out.”

Aziraphale sniffs and extinguishes his knife. “I’ve subdued them.”

Crowley watches the tiny infant under his care. “They tortured her, angel. They deserve so much more than whatever you’ve done to them.” He pulls back his coat so that Aziraphale may get an idea of what needs to be healed.

“Vengeance is the Lord’s,” Aziraphale declares, but his eyes flash when he sees the damage on the tiny angel. “Today, however, you may have a turn too.” Then he crouches down and speaks far more softly. “Well hello there, my dear girl. Shall we get you patched up?”

Crowley rolls his shoulders and stands up to his full height. The five remaining humans are standing, dazed in a small group together. Crowley kicks the dead one onto his back and examines him. An older mortal, it seems. He probably couldn’t handle the power running across his heart. Crowley leans down and presses demonic power into his chest.

He notes that the soul has gone down to the Seventh Level. He licks his finger until it sparks and presses this to the dead man’s forehead. His serpent sigil burns into the skin and then disappears. It will reappear on his head in Hell. He’s been singled out for extra torture by Crawly-Crowley, the traitor, Serpent of Eden, Creator of the Original Sin.

Since he’s not exactly on bad terms with Hell, he might have to owe a few favors to Beelzebub to get this to happen for all six of them. Then again, if he told them what exactly these fuckers had been torturing, they might give it to him without the IOU. They had both worked in the nursery, after all.

He slithers over to the remaining five—all of whom come to life and focus on him with a wave of his hand. He licks his fingertips and flicks them at each of the mortal’s faces. They scream in pain as the saliva-laced-with-hellfire burns into their immortal soul.

“Enjoy reaping what you sowed,” he snarls as the ground opens up and demon hands wrap around their ankles and legs. The mortals scream in terror, but the demons yank them down into Hell. The ground swallows them up. Nothing remains of them but the mess they made of Arthur’s Seat.

Glaring, Crowley snaps and the torches extinguish. The chalk and salt lines dissolve. The knife and book move to the bookshop. The dead body sinks into Hell the same way his living brethren did. The fledgling gives hiccuping sobs as Aziraphale lifts her into his arms.

“My dear,” the angel says, uncomfortably, “I think that’s enough.”

Crowley strides to their sides and pulls the leather jacket away from her face to check on her.

“They were marked for downstairs anyway. They made some sort of bargain with their souls to access that magic.” He pulls his sunglasses down his nose to give her a warm smile. She blinks at him, still crying.

“All the same… I believe you’re frightening her.”

Crowley taps the end of her nose with his finger.

“I’m sure I am. I am a big scary demon, aren’t I?” he asks almost in a sing-song. “Were you able to heal her? My magic just seemed to hurt her.”

Aziraphale frowns and shuffles her closer. “I’m not sure that was due to your occult nature, my love. Her wings will not mend. That cut on her tummy also seems… unable to heal by a miracle. Magic on magic can be strange, you know. She may just have to heal with time.”

Crowley hums. “Do you think we have time? Do you think Heaven will come after her?”

  
Aziraphale’s eyes are only reflections of starlight here, but they are wide. “Can’t you sense that she’s… different?” he asks carefully.

Crowley turns his yellow eyes on the child and takes in her nature. Yes, divine magic sparkles there, but also the ember glow of the damned and the music of humanity.

“She’s part demon?” he questions in surprise.

“And human, I think. Something new.” Aziraphale sounds awed. "I do not think Heaven even heard her, my dear. I think they may have completely dismissed her because she’s unique.”

“So plenty of time for her to heal with us, then,” the demon decides. Aziraphale gives a tired smile.

“Just so.”

“Do you think she can travel by miracle?” Crowley asks, using one finger to touch the crown of her head. Her curls are soft against his skin, even the bits that are stiff with blood.

“I would rather like to get home tonight and you know by rail will take nearly eight hours—if the railway is running on schedule.” Aziraphale says primly. “Plus, I do not think it will hurt her. Magic aimed for power or injury, on the other hand, would be especially painful to her.”

“I’ll keep all my thoughts toward safety and transportation only then.” Crowley jokes as he opens his wings. They look like purple outlines in the darkness. He tucks them around Aziraphale and the fledgling and pulls them both close in his arms.

“Let’s take her home.”

And time and space bend around his will, leaving them stepping out into the entrance of the bookshop a mere heartbeat after they left Scotland. Instantly, Crowley feels drained and he groans. It doesn’t matter just yet, as Aziraphale shifts her into Crowley’s arms the moment they arrive and glances up the spiral staircase.

“I believe everything she will need just arrived,” he says as he moves to his desk to inspect the grimoire. He pulls on white cotton gloves and settles his glasses on his nose. “I’ll be along in a moment. I have some questions.”

Crowley gives Aziraphale a fond look. “I’m not sure how wise it is for you to be reading that right now. You’re a bit glow-y.”

Aziraphale examines his arms and the holy hue dims. “I’ll just have a glance then. I want to know what I need to strengthen the wards against.”

“Sure, angel. I’m sure that’s all it is.” He winks, but it’s half-hearted with fatigue.

Aziraphale looks over his spectacles knowingly. “The Nephilim were begotten the usual way. That little one was not, as far as I can tell. I would like to have place of reference to work from.” He settles into his chair and pulls it closer to his desk, already lost in the text.

Crowley hums and directs his next comment to the infant in his arms. “Never get between him and book—even one that’s tried to kill him or others recently. He adores research.” He climbs the stairs two-at-a-time, without ever jostling her. “Now, let’s see what he’s made for you.”

Their flat is a true miracle. It fused each of their living spaces into one. It completely defies physics and the conservation of space. Crowley loves it; from its cream-white walls to its gray concrete floor, it is the perfect blend of their tastes. Of course, looking at it critically, it is completely the opposite of baby-proof.

He carries her into the living room and opens the door into their bedroom. The main piece in the room is their four-poster bed from 1534. It was a gift from Anne Boleyn to Lady Antonia Crowley after she helped the Queen following a miscarriage. Once, the gift has been a heartbreaking reminder of the loss of a royal child and a dear friend. Now, its silver-gilt walnut pillars, and crimson and blue silks make him smile. The Queen had always intended it to be Lady Crowley and her husband’s marriage bed—and Anne knew who Crowley wanted as a husband.

Queen Anne would be pleased to see it standing next to a Gothic mahogany cradle. It makes Crowley’s breath catch. He leans closer and studies the ornate carved sides and hood. It rocks like a swing on a stand. Beside it is a wicker rocking chair that Aziraphale picked up during its height of popularity under Queen Victoria.

Crowley wonders how these antiques will stand up to a toddler. Then he shakes himself. There is little chance that she will be able to stay with them. Once Gabriel and old Wankwings hear about the infant they’ll be down to collect her—or destroy her, he amends darkly.

Crowley sets his leather-jacket wrapped fledgling on his hip and hunts around for an infant towel. He’s had practice with baby humans in the last twelve years, what with Warlock and all. Unfortunately, Aziraphale seems to only have provided what he could think of from seeing Warlock’s nursery from a distance. With a sigh and a snap, bathing and nappy supplies appear.

The fledgling is exhausted and traumatized. Unwrapping her from the jacket sets her into a new sort of panic.No amount of reassurance will settle her. Crowley wonders if all of London can feel her emotions. Aziraphale must because he joins them as Crowley lays her into her bath chair inside the tub.

“My dear, _what_ are you doing to her?” he asks, scandalized.

“Jus’ cleaning her up, angel. She’s been through somebody-knows-what. She’s got the right to yell.” Crowley observes as he pours a cup filled with warm water slowly over her dark skin. Golden blood wipes away with a flannel, but she screams when soap touches the open wounds on her wings and stomach.

“You poor darling,” Aziraphale whispers and pushes peace to her. She sniffles then throws her head back and howls at twice the volume. Crowley hurries and whispers reassurances to her.

“Almost done,” he promises and scoops her up to sit forward. He rinses her wings and tiny bits of fluff float away with the water. Patches of skin show where her newly-grown pin feathers have been ripped out. Her tiny bones have not grown to their full size yet, but her first feathers had been coming in. Crowley lifts her out of the water and wraps her in an infant towel.

Aziraphale follows him like a shadow to the foot of their bed. He lays the infant there and makes a note to miracle a changing table when he’s not feeling so fried. If he tried it now, who knows how wobbly it might be. While he rubs lotion onto her legs, Crowley directs the angel to find some sort of antibiotic salve and bandage.

“I’m not sure she can get an infection, my darling,” Aziraphale reminds him. He hands over an ointment tin with a smile. “But I use this on my feet, it’s lovely. It should help.”

It smells of lavender when Crowley rubs it into her tummy. She sobs but seems to have tired herself out.

“She has an Effort,” Aziraphale notes, absently. “And a navel.”

“Angel, you have both those things too,” Crowley replies as he quickly applies bandage, nappy, and its appropriate cream.

“Yes, but, my dear, I created those. She did not manifest her own corporation.”

Blinking in confusion, Crowley creates a baby-angel-onesie with another snap.

“That’s darling,” Aziraphale coos and Crowley rolls his eyes. It’s nothing fancy due to his weary mind.

The baby wants to ball up. It’s a fight to force her toes into socks and six limbs (legs, arms, and wings) into their appropriate position. Finally, with a hat on her head, she gets stuffed into a baby gown and zipped in.

“Does she need so many layers?” Aziraphale worries. He fingers the bottom of the gown and its lack of feet. Already she has bent her knees back up into this sleeping sack.

“Warlock liked them,” Crowley replies and traces the rubber ducks that line it. He doesn’t remember adding those to his mental plan, but sometimes the builder in him runs loose when he’s tired.

“Of course,” Aziraphale decides that bowing to Crowley’s knowledge is best.

Crowley lifts the fledgling and rocks her in his arms. “The Almighty made her partial human, partially demonic, and partially angelic. She gave her an Effort—“

His angel is glowing again and Crowley can tell that Aziraphale is opening his more ethereal eyes. The demon looks away. Aziraphale is beautiful in all his forms, but such holiness this close can blind him.

“She doesn’t have a name,” the angel announces quietly. “How is that possible?”

Crowley’s yawn halts in surprise. “You mean at her core? That’s _impossible_. When fledglings were pulled from the firmament She already knew who they were. She designed them by hand. No one else was allowed to help; all angels are molded by the Almighty alone.”

Aziraphale looks at the fledgling again. “Be that as it may, she does not have a name in her core.”

Crowley has no reply. He looks down at the downy curls and notes scrapes and cuts that have not healed. He will help as best as he can—right now, that means nourishment.

“Come here, angel,” Crowley orders and directs him to the rocking chair. “She needs to eat.” At this, the baby decides to begin to scream again. She’s so tired that these cries are weak at best. Aziraphale frowns as he sits.

“Angels do not need to eat… what is the wording Gabriel has used before— _gross_ _matter_?”

“I could not give two shits what that tosser thinks.”

“As well you shouldn’t, my dear boy, I only was about to suggest that she may as she is not entirely of Heaven.” A bottle with formula appears at Aziraphale’s side because he expects it to be there as he reaches for it.

Crowley sniffs, “Sure, angel, but when was the last time she ate physically? We need to go slow. We should feed her divine side as well. It only needs to ingest affection and love. That’s what we fed ‘em in the nursery.”

Aziraphale looks up sharply, his bright eyes keen. “Heaven’s nursery?”

Crowley tucks the fledgling into Aziraphale arms, mindful of her wings. He tucks around them both, securing the fledgling’s head with his hand and his other arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders. Aziraphale guides the nipple into the fledgling’s mouth and she smacks her lips.

“Mhmm, one and the same.” Crowley agrees and leans forward so that his sunglasses slip down his nose. As the infant suckles, he looks into Aziraphale’s eyes. “You were one of our charges. Not mine to look after, but I rocked you to sleep once or twice.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale breathes like a surprise. “You were a builder.”

Crowley flinches, but Aziraphale leans into him and presses their heads together. He did not mean this as an accusation. “Someday, you’ll show me some of what you made in that time?”

Crowley turns slightly and presses a kiss to the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth. “Someday, sure. We’ll make a trip of it. Neptune, Alcor, Gacruz, the whole shebang.”

Aziraphale turns a bit more and returns the kiss, a little more insistent. “Surely Alpha Centauri is on the route?”

Crowley can become drunk on Aziraphale’s kisses. He leans in for another and another after that. This one he uses to map Aziraphale’s lower lip and into his mouth. He rubs his tongue against the angel’s and is rewarded with a brush of teeth on his lower lip.

“Of course,” he agrees breathlessly. “Both of those stars and their red dwarf Proxima. We’ll tour them all.” It’s during the next slow, headed kiss that he remembers the infant. He breaks away reluctantly and looks down at her. She’s blissed out, only holding the nipple in her mouth, asleep.

“Maybe we overdid it? We never snogged in the nursery,” Crowley notes, in sotto voce. “The infants never slept either,” he adds.

He lifts her to his shoulder and pats her back. The fledgling gives an impressive belch for one so small. Aziraphale seems charmed and touches her back.

His blessing sparkles around her like a pulse and she sighs. Crowley settles her into the cradle on her stomach. Her injured wings spread out across her tiny back and relax. The cradle rocks slowly with a divine miracle. Seeing her settled seems to break something in Crowley. He is suddenly unable to stay upright. Aziraphale presses his hand into the small of Crowley’s back.

“Let’s get you into bed. I’m sure she’ll be awake again in a few hours,” he notes and guides the demon to the mattress side.

“A few hours? If we’re lucky,” Crowley mutters, but kicks off his boots and begins to wiggle out of trousers. Aziraphale exits the room as he undresses. Lights dim around the flat and bookshop below it. Crowley feels a new whisper of magic seeps into their home. The fledgling gives another contented sigh.

Crowley drops his sunglasses onto the bedside table and crawls into their bed in his boxers and vest. The duvet and mattress are not the same ones that Anne gifted him. Straw and feathers were not worth keeping that long, even protected with miracles. The duvet is more to Aziraphale’s tastes—beige and tartan. At least the angel let him add black and red stripes to the tartan. The thread count is like a dream though. He relaxes into the bed and listens for Aziraphale.

There is the rattle of the stair and the squeak of the door into their flat. Aziraphale is whispering prayers under his breath in Enochian, which makes the hairs on Crowley’s arms stand to attention. The fledgling grunts and she twitches.

The door to their room closes with a click after Aziraphale enters. He sets a pile of books on his nightstand and begins to strip out of his multiple layers of clothing. Crowley sits up on his elbow to watch. Aziraphale meets his eyes and smiles. Without comment, he snaps and Crowley finds that, like the fledgling, he’s been bathed.

“I hate cleaning my teeth by miracle,” Crowley whines and licks his upper teeth. “Feels weird.”

“I would rather not cuddle the dust of that place,” Aziraphale decides primly and pats his pajama top. He lifts the covers and slides into bed next to his demon.

He fluffs his pillows and then settles back on them, before opening his arms. Crowley wiggles forward and drapes himself across the angel’s chest. Burrowing snakes are equipped with sharp snouts to push away dirt. Crowley has a sharp nose for snuggling into angel pajamas. He presses his face into Aziraphale’s pectoral and rubs his nose on the flannel fabric. Once they’re arranged, Aziraphale reaches for the first of the books from his bedside pile.

“Jane Austen? Really?” Crowley judges, sleepily.

“Well, she needs a name, after all,” Aziraphale concedes with a glance at the cradle. He flips to the first chapter. “I have always had a soft spot for Elizabeth Bennet. She’s sharp-witted, proud, beautiful, and deeply protective of those she loves.” He cups the base of Crowley’s head and strokes the back of his neck with just his thumb. His tone is very telling.

“I remind you of Lizzie Bennet? _Really_ , angel?” Crowley teases, huffing hot air onto his shirt.

“Perhaps she reminds me of you.”

“I was always more particular to Mr. Darcy,” Crowley yawns. “Stuffy with strong opinions about everything. Decidedly charming in his own way, but far too introverted for his own good.” Crowley rubs his face on Aziraphale’s top again. “Generous and protective. A touch possessive.”

Aziraphale snorts, unabashedly superior and judgmental. “I do not like when others touch my things.”

Crowley chuckles. “Obviously.” Then he adds thoughtfully, “Unless you give it away.”

“Oh, not that bloody sword again, I will never hear the end of it!” Aziraphale groans and lets the book waver in his hold. His grip does not move from Crowley’s head. Crowley chuckles again and lets his eyes fall shut.

“We could always call her Antonia if you prefer?” the angel continues. “Although that could become confusing.”

“Mm, nah, I like Elizabeth. Similar enough to ‘Ezra’ that we could claim it’s a family name,” Crowley decides, letting his body relax. “We have a decision then? Elizabeth Fell?”

Aziraphale closes his book and lays it on his chest next to Crowley’s head. “If she carries a derivative of my chosen name, then let her surname be yours. Elizabeth Crowley.”

Crowley’s eyes open slowly and he turns his head to meet Aziraphale’s eyes. “Did we just become parents?”

The angel’s fingers glide up into the short hair at the base of Crowley’s skull. “You’ve been a mother before, my dear.”

Crowley raises his eyebrows. “Never had a co-parent before. Never had a daughter with my partner before either.”

A warm blush tints Aziraphale’s cheeks. “I suppose I am a father then.”

Crowley feels like his face will split open. He smiles and his eyes shine. He’s still bone-weary from so many miracles, but even so, he is so filled with hope.

“Your firstborn,” Crowley says wonderingly, “with me.”

Who could have imagined this? For thousands of years, Crowley pined after Aziraphale’s smiles and companionship. He dreamt of his hazel eyes and white-blond hair. He made himself sick while thinking of his well-manicured hands and stuffy outfits. Yet here they lay, tangled in their own bed with their child just a few steps away. Crowley feels tears prickle in his eyes and he hides his face in Aziraphale’s chest.

Aziraphale must know this because he tightens his hold on the demon. They are quiet for a long time. Crowley listens to Aziraphale breathe and traffic swish by their bedroom window.

“My dear,” Aziraphale finally says, breaking their silence, “I need to tell you something else I discovered in my quick study of that grimoire.”

Crowley wipes his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, then faces the angel with burning eyes. Aziraphale cups his cheek with his other hand and smiles lovingly down at him.

“I’ve been ruminating on it—there is much to read between the lines if you would.”

Crowley sniffs, “Go on, then, angel.”

“Elizabeth was pulled from the firmament by the ritual.”

“I think we’ve established that already—“

“Forgive me, my dear, but, no. I must rephrase my wording if you’re unclear—“

“Don’t go all professor on me—“

“—the humans pulled essence from the firmament and made her.”

Crowley’s mouth works soundlessly. “What?” he finally manages, with a partial squeak.

“She has an Effort and a navel—“

“What—yes, we’ve established this!” Crowley states with a raising voice.

“—she can nurse and eat like a human child. We’ve seen her core—“

“—are you saying that the grimoire gave directions for a human—a plain old, mortal human—to pull a created being from the firmament and breathe life into it?”

Aziraphale is very still. His eyes look ancient. “From what I can discern, the occult nature of the rituals required a brutal sacrifice. A living mortal was killed with an unholy blade, then their life energy was stuffed into the firmament shell they called into existence.”

Crowley does not blink often. It’s usually a conscious effort to do so. Now, he just stares.

“Their life energy,” he says slowly, tasting the words.

“The ritual burns their soul, not like a hellish burn either. This is not damnation; it’s _smelting_.” Aziraphale fidgets with the button on his pajama top. “I believe that soul never went to the afterlife. It was, in essence, snuffed out completely. Its energy recycled, but the soul destroyed.”

“Like holy water,” Crowley breathes, no longer tired. He turns this over and over again in his mind.

“Like hellfire,” Aziraphale agrees.

“Where _the_ _fuck_ did this book come from?” Crowley finally asks.

“As it deals with murder and angel torture, I assumed—“

“You know what the mortals say about assuming things, angel,” Crowley snipes, and Aziraphale sniffs and wiggles unpleasantly. “Plus, that’s not been in the halls of Hell. Books and paperwork there are damp and mildewed within minutes. That looked… cared for.”

“Indeed,” Aziraphale says thoughtfully. “It will require additional research.”

“It will require,” Crowley mimics, then suddenly switches to his own voice, although pitched lower, “destroying.”

Aziraphale studies him knowingly. “And how would we do that, my darling? Fire will send it into Hell and water into Heaven. Neither side needs to get their hands on that. We could chop it up? Yet, lacerations can be healed with the right words or miracle.”

“Outer space,” Crowley decides and begins to climb out of his angel’s arms. “I’ll take it now.”

“No, Crowley, you need to rest.”

Crowley stares at him with determined yellow eyes. “Not while you two are still in danger from something in my own home.”

If Aziraphale were about to argue, the reminder of the little one to protect stops him. He wraps his hand around Crowley’s wrist and tugs him back into their bed and into his arms. Crowley settles, but slowly.

“Tomorrow then, I’ve still got answers to find. Why did they know to make her blood gold? Does she have internal organs? Why assign her an Effort—“

“—because they had to imagine her coming from the firmament. When we built we had to know all the specifications.” He thinks for a moment, then lays his cheek on the plain of Aziraphale’s chest. “We’d run the numbers and do the maths for hours. We knew every element into each design, knew the number of electrons and the years until decay. If they created her, then they had to design her from inside out.”

Aziraphale pulls another book from his stack. It’s a children’s encyclopedia from 1947 about human anatomy. He flips at random to the circulatory system.

“So they used what they knew about themselves,” he notes.

Crowley glares at the book. “You already figured that out.”

“I had an inkling. I just needed your experiences as support. I think it’s safe to say that, minus the wings, she’s human.”

Crowley shuffles down and pulls the duvet around his shoulders. “Golden blood, though.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale notes, absently, “curious.”

Elizabeth gives a grunt and then a pitiful, waking cry. Crowley sighs and points to the bottle that she did not finish earlier.

“Warm that up, will you? I’m tapped out.” He slides from the bed and lifts his daughter into his arms. He feels Aziraphale’s magic circle the bottle.

“Come on then, Lizzie,” Crowley coaxes, “Let’s go see Baba.”

When he turns to grab the bottle, Aziraphale is gaping at him. Joy and love roll off of him in waves.

“Baba?” he asks, completely spellbound.

Crowley snags the bottle and self-consciously climbs onto the bed again. He snuggles back into the bedding and cradles the fledgling with her bottle.

He stutters and hisses as he speaks, “You can change it, of course. I just always thought it suited you. Baba, you know, very traditional and all, but if you don’t like it—“

“No, I just… you’ve thought of me this way?” he swallows, trying to hide his emotion down from his voice, “As your children’s father? As their ‘baba’?”

Crowley will not look up. He fusses with Elizabeth’s bottle and adjusts his hold on her. Aziraphale’s hand covers his. Crowley looks up to find the angel much closer to him, staring into his face.

“Crowley?”

He gulps.

“Yes,” he hisses, the word stretching out much longer than intended. Aziraphale’s smile is wide and happy, making Crowley blush and duck his head.

Elizabeth gurgles and Crowley lifts her up to burp her.

“Oh, my heart’s darling,” Aziraphale whispers, watching Crowley with that wonder-filled love once again. His eyes sparkle, besottedly. “What will we call you? Abba? Nanny? Mummy?”

Crowley feels the flush burning down his neck. “Choose my name; I picked yours.”

He moves Elizabeth from his shoulder to his arms, this time in the opposite position. She takes the bottle readily. Aziraphale wraps a hand around Crowley’s side and grips his hip. The other arm encircles his chest and supports under Elizabeth’s back. Then, with little effort, he lifts Crowley and Elizabeth up and into his lap. The demon’s breath catches. The angel doesn’t show his true strength too often.

Aziraphale perches his chin on Crowley’s shoulder and watched the infant suck down her formula. He may be quiet, but Crowley knows that his mind is working through hundreds of years’ worth of parental titles.

Elizabeth pulls on the nipple but cries simultaneously. Again he wonders when she last ate; she is barely taking twenty milliliters each time, which suggests a shrunken stomach. Crowley frowns and unzips her sleep sack. Elizabeth holds her knees against her stomach in a tight ball. He rubs his hand down her distended belly, mindful of the cuts. She gives a pitiful cry and balls up her fist. Crowley stretches out his legs and lays her across them like he’s holding her in a trench. He takes hold of both of her legs and extends them out and moves them as if she were kicking.

“Stretch out, little one,” he coaxes, hoping the exercise will help her bloated intestines deal with the incoming food. 

“Listen to your Nonny,” Aziraphale says, pronouncing the title as Elizabeth Bennet herself might have, and Crowley’s movements stutter like he’s forgotten what he was doing.

“Is that… do you like that?” the angel asks hesitantly. "It's nonbinary these days, they say, anyway, if you'd rather something more gendered, there's always Papa? Or Mum? We could combine some words? Mada?"

Tears well in Crowley’s eyes and he moves Elizabeth’s legs. His breath hitches. He can only nod, so he does, vigorously.

"Nonny," he chokes out.

Aziraphale presses a kiss to his jawline then continues to kiss around Crowley’s chin and up to behind his ear. Elizabeth gives a dreamy sigh and lets out an impressive blast of wind. Aziraphale stops kissing and rests his forehead on the back of Crowley's skull with a nearly hysterical laugh.

“Oh, well, my dear, I believe that’s sorted out,” he chuckles, wrapping his arms tightly around Crowley’s chest. The demon leans back into Aziraphale’s chest but continues to maneuver the infant’s legs.

“You get to miracle her clean then,” Crowley yawns.

Aziraphale snaps and the baby’s eye open, shocked. “Oh, bother,” Aziraphale grumbles, but Elizabeth just blinks slowly and her eyes flutter closed again.

Crowley zips her back into her sack and tucks her against his chest. Aziraphale seems content to simply lift and move the demon where he wants him because he scoops his partner up and lays him under the duvet.

“Let her stay with us,” he whispers as he tucks Crowley and Elizabeth in. He lays down and pulls them close. Crowley wants to argue, but the words are lost. He closes his eyes and sleeps.


	2. Chapter 2

Elizabeth has to eat physical food about once an hour. Aziraphale assumes it has to do with the sheer amount of trauma she’s undergone. Crowley wakes each time she fusses, but Aziraphale urges him to rest. He’s not as depleted as he was after they stopped Armageddon, but he still seems weary. 

While Crowley sleeps, the angel rocks her and feeds her. He reads about binding bird wings and studies the bones on her own. With a snap, veterinary tape appears. He rolls Elizabeth onto her stomach and carefully guides her right wing closed against her back.

She grumbles but doesn’t cry. He straightens it again, pulling the bones and muscles wide open. She shifts, but, otherwise, submits to the action. He touches each and checks for burns. The left wing, however, makes her scream when he shifts it closed. Crowley jolts awake with wide eyes.

“Angel?” he asks, alarmed.

“Hold her, please,” he instructs and Crowley struggles to sit up. Aziraphale holds her wing against her tiny torso and tapes it into place. Once bandaged and still, her cries turn from pain into those of a tired infant. Crowley tucks her close and hums.

“It’s alright. I know, it hurt, but the bone needs to set,” he whispers to her. “Baba’s sorry, little one.”

Aziraphale nods and tucks the tape into his bedside table. “I am, that I am.” His hands shake. “I hurt her.”

Crowley shifts closer and holds her between them. He looks at Aziraphale knowingly. “When I took Warlock for his inoculations, I nearly threw up,” he confesses. “The pediatrician asked me to hold the baby. Warlock is babbling away to me and then he gets his jab. He looked at me like I’d broken his trust. It killed me.”

Aziraphale looks into his yellow eyes.

“You had to do it,” Crowley reminds him. “She will be all right.”

The demon yawns then and settles his shoulder against Aziraphale’s chest. Encouraged, the angel leans back into the pillows and pulls them with him. Elizabeth cries until Crowley slips his pinkie into her mouth. She suckles.

“We need a dummy,” he murmurs. 

“Could you give me a list of what we need?” Aziraphale asks, feeling completely at sea. “I could miracle it while you two rest.”

He grabs a leather-bound journal from the bedside and his favorite screw cap fountain pen. He scribbles the list down as his lover speaks.

“Dummies, nappies, powder, creams, more blankets,” he pauses to yawn. “Warlock had this sling carry thing. It was helpful when I needed to get stuff done but he was demanding to be held. Toys and books, of course—“

Aziraphale cannot contain his delighted noise. “Baby books! Oh!”

Crowley sighs indulgently and Aziraphale pokes him in the small of the back in retaliation.

“A carrycot with wheels? Or a pram? Whichever you’d like—but a car seat too. Clothes, formula, bottles—good someone, I forgot how much bloody stuff babies need.”

“A bag to put it in? You had one with Warlock.” Aziraphale remembers the Rebecca Minkoff diaper bag that the demon carried. Black leather and studded, it suited him well. 

“If you must have tartan,” Crowley scowls, “I’ll carry Burberry, but nothing else.”

“And you say I’m pretentious and fussy,” he sniffs in reply.

“I say you’re difficult.”

“I’m meticulous.”

Crowley hums, “Now you’re being a fucking prat.”

Aziraphale gasps dramatically and covers Elizabeth’s tiny ears with his fingers. “Crowley!” Then he gives an over-done sneer. “You’re still upset about my attire from the Bastille.”

This seems to remind Crowley of his list-making. “Yeah, clothes too. Hats, socks, the whole thing. And make some of it come from this century, would you?”

Elizabeth smacks her lips on Crowley’s finger but watches them with dark eyes.

“You don’t trust us yet,” the demon says, his voice soft, “but you can.”

It’s such a simple sentiment, but so deep with promise. She blinks at them. It doesn’t take long before Crowley is dozing against his lover’s chest, but Aziraphale and Elizabeth continue to watch each other. He maps each hurt across her face—a laceration that begins at her hairline and disappears into her dark curls, a bruise on her cheekbone, and missing eyelashes. 

“Nonny is right, as he often is. You’re ours now and we’re yours.” He touches her small middle gently but she still winces. He’s healed many physical wounds on mortals. “Should heal,” he mutters thoughtfully and considers her belly. Why is this one different?

As idea springs to mind and he lets his mystical faces manifest. If angels were bits of beasts, then Aziraphale is a true menagerie. Each means something special. He is a military leader so he has the head of a griffin. He is also a glutton with the face of a hog. He is a protective wolf. His tortoise head represents intellect. 

The eyes on each face open and golden light hums around him. At her age, Elizabeth’s eyes struggle to focus on anything but that which is directly before her, but she turns to the brightness. He does not look at her. First, always first, the heads all swivel to Crowley. He’s rarely seen his beloved with all his eyes and it is the best temptation his serpent has ever succeeded at.

Crowley’s physical being shines before his eyes as a layer. Auburn hair and freckled skin are the first. Below that, lampblack wings, jet and ruby scales, sharpened talons, and a broken halo hide. Crowley’s is a rusty crescent moon that surrounds his head as it best can while missing the top half of its circle. Honestly, at this angle, it looks like Halloween demon horns. 

Smiling, Aziraphale peers deeper. In the layer beyond, Crowley is a serpent. If he were to look beyond, which he does now, Aziraphale would dig into the deepest part of who Crowley is. Hellfire flames lick at cogwheels, which click into one another with satisfying exactness. Pistons fire, and belts and fans spin. Between it, an inky blackness swirls like snaking smoke. There are serpentine eyes there. Most rest, but six focus on him lazily. These study him before drifting to sleep again, still open like a snake.

Using this same sight, he looks at the layers of the child in their arms. Dark skin and singed hair. The sigil cut into her stomach shimmers with dark magic. His tortoise head stretches out on a wrinkled neck to study the mark. It swirls like Crowley’s smoke but is not the same. A magicked blade certainly made the cuts—but not demonic magic, yet similar.

Her wings are not tucked away from the physical world, but her halo is. Elizabeth’s halo is not centered around her head, but her entire physical body. It mixes the golden, holy light of heaven with damnation’s rusty burn-like waves. Interspersed are words. 

Aziraphale copies them carefully into his notebook. He spreads the words onto multiple pages to keep their power contained. He makes notions to where on her body each word is located. 

_shoulder (l) familiar_

_arm (l) gifted_

_leg (l) novice_

_feet (bottom) energy_

_leg (r) vessel_

_arm (r) cogent_

_shoulder (r) aves_

_head hominum_

His griffin face cocks inquisitively at the page, while his canine and porcine heads study Elizabeth. Below this half-holy and half-damned halo is her inner being, the Host used to call this the “true self”. In humans, it’s a soul—a shining wisp of blue light. In demons and angels, the engines that implemented the Great Plan. 

In Elizabeth, startlingly, there is nothing like any of that. 

All four heads tilt and examine her form. Not only does she lack a true name, but she also lacks the inner workings that he would expect to see in an immortal. Instead, she is crackles of electricity ringed in an aura. There is no mortal soul as Aziraphale knows it, but no engine to generate this power either. If he’s honest, she is just housing for electric current. He sits back and shifts slowly back into his corporeal form. His heads slowly slip back into the mystic realm and he adjusts to his suddenly limited sight. 

“What did you see?” Crowley mumbles sleepily from where he lounges. 

“Not what I expected,” he admits. “I’m going downstairs.”

Crowley hums and rolls over on his side. He brings Elizabeth with him and lays her on her stomach. Aziraphale shifts from the bed and, after tucking pillows around the fledgling, gathers his notebook and heads down to the bookshop.

The grimoire sits on the desk, innocuously. 

Aziraphale knows better. It crepitates with an energy similar to the electricity he saw in Elizabeth. Crowley hasn’t noticed yet, but the angel forgives him. The demon is always a little preoccupied with babies.

He sets his notes on one side of his desk, then slides on his white cotton gloves and spectacles. He sits primly and extends his senses.

He only feels paper. 

He lets his eyes open.

Unsatisfied, he opens the cover cautiously, studying each end page for secret messages or codes in the marbled paper. Satisfied, he moves on, searching page by page. He’s read the ritual that created Elizabeth twice already, but now he needs to look at the entire text.

The first page is nothing but the directions to mix concrete. Several of the numbers are scratched out or edited.

~~_1:4:3:0.9_ ~~

_1 part cement_

_~~4 parts~~ sand let’s try three next time? _

_3 parts gravel_

_~~0.9~~ water way too wet _

Below this, in the bottom right corner of the page, is a sketchy illustration of a trowel. Next, there are three blank pages. After that is a drawing of the molecular structure of capsaicin, but there are multiple attempts at this. One is x-ed out. It’s followed by another two blank pages.

There is a freehanded drawing of a tadpole, but it looks out of proportion. The sketch has notes about the internal gill system and water tension. There are some started calculations, but nothing specific.

The next seven pages following it include the instructions and illustrations for a ritual that will turn a frog into a bubble. It allows the caster to take energy from a small living creature and perform a physical activity that uses air. The idea of making all the bells in a church tower ring simultaneously is suggested. The fact that the animal dies is inferred. It makes Aziraphale shudder.

The next page is an article and complex math equation about electrons under extreme pressure. Then blank pages. Next, blueprints for root systems, then pages detailing the horrific ritual of collecting power through a gruesome murder (“draw the energy through the nerve system”). 

The pattern is clear: first a scientific or mathematical certainty, followed by a ritual that uses the theory. The blank pages are where these could be later recorded as they are discovered.

Then as Aziraphale nears the middle of the book, his eyes lock on familiar handwriting. Crowley’s scrawl lines the pages. He includes the known orbit value for a created solar system but then calculates additional orbit rates on a dual star system. The numbers are scratched out here and there, some with a giant “NO” written across them as the mathematical work is revised. The angel stares at the notes, ignoring Crowley’s less than subtle “OH COME ON” written in messy, uneven handwriting. The star system seems familiar. 

“Alpha Centauri,” Aziraphale whispers when he realizes. He reads the mismatched letters and scans the graphs and maths. This is Crowley’s chicken scratch, but the artistry is pristine. These are the planning stages for something new. He sits back. 

“These are the _notes_ from the beginning of creation. A mortal got hold of the blueprints from heaven.” 

Said aloud it sounds even more preposterous than he thought. Some of these calculations were run before humanity was even discussed. Besides that, how would someone get these notes? How would a human jump from them into the idea of crafting rituals? Perseverance is totally human, but this is beyond anything he's ever seen before. He rubs his eyes under his glasses.

The next page is a ritual that transforms an ordinary ritual _athame_ into a weapon of power. It requires Hellfire. This alone gives Aziraphale pause. To know that it exists is one thing, to be able to acquire it from Hell is another.

There are calculations on a Heavenly nest and then, the ritual that he’s studied twice already. First, directions for pulling items from the firmament. The ritual is simple, but it’s impossible without strong magic. The next step is to murder a willing follower with the _athame_ and tie the new “vessel” from the firmament around the power. He’d stopped reading here before, just focusing on how they designed Elizabeth’s form. However, he turns the page this time. The instructions dictate how the circles they’d seen in Scotland were drawn. Their purpose is solely used to pull the power from the baby into those seeking it. 

He closes the grimoire and removes his gloves. He’s nauseous. They created Elizabeth for the sole purpose of sacrificing her. He pushes away from his desk with determination. He has to ruminate on what he’s learned. Sometimes the best way to deal with a problem is to work on something else.

With this in mind, he turns his attention to Crowley’s infant supply list. Some of the items require some research online. The tower of his 1998 computer chugs to power his web browsing. He studies the items before snapping and bringing them into the bookshop. Some exclusive baby boutiques will find their inventory changed, but their accounts increased to reflect the sale. Crowley might steal, but not the angel. 

The world outside is quiet and gray when he looks out the window. A new day might bring more hope with it, he thinks as he looks over at the grimoire. Then he hears Elizabeth screaming upstairs. It makes him smile—he’s a _father_. She wriggles and cries as Crowley comes down the spiral staircase with her in his arms. He’s trying to get her to take the bottle, but she refuses.

“Here, Baba,” he grumbles and passes her to Aziraphale. “You try. She’s cranky.” 

The angel takes her to the armchair and coos to her. “Settle down, my little love,” he says, smitten. Once she’s taken the nipple (to Crowley’s eye roll and huff), he explains his theory to his partner.

“This cult is power-hungry. They’ve created their own rituals from discarded notes back when you were building,” he says, haltingly.

“No one could just take our notes and make anything,” Crowley argues after hearing Aziraphale’s thoughts. He studies his own handwriting in the book. 

“Builders have something in our very… designs, I guess, that allows us to manipulate the physical sciences. A human is not made that way. How they made the jumps between our cast-off notes to these rituals, that’s…something else. No human knows about any of our ways, nor could they do anything anyhow.”

“A builder would,” the angel argues. “They would also know about golden ethereal blood.”

“You think a former builder—a _demon_ —made a human?” he shakes his head no. “Have you seen the best we could make without a heavenly core? Imps are walking globs of scales—they’re like crocodiles that ate a balloon.”

Aziraphale nods knowingly, “Oh, I met one—he was the usher at our trial.”

Crowley rubs his hand down his throat, “He got dunked, right?”

“Just so.” 

Crowley hummed thoughtfully. “Then you saw how little they are. Anything larger and they exploded like a piñata. Great at parties, but a bitch to clean out of your hair.”

Aziraphale ignores the visual and snaps to miracle Elizabeth’s unfinished bottle into the icebox. He lifts her without any of the finesse Crowley has and attempts to burp her.

“That only leaves angels with holy cores. None of them have any building experiences, as far as I know,” Aziraphale comments as he pats her back.

“Nope. Every builder fell. Every last one of us is a demon,” his voice drops sarcastically. “She didn’t even thank us properly for our work. Just said ‘neat, here’s some babies’ and kept throwing make-work at us.”

Aziraphale had learned more about Crowley’s time in heaven in this conversation than all their years together before. He watches the pages as Crowley continues to speak.

“And none of you ever taught an angel—no, you couldn’t have, they wouldn’t have the design for it, would they?” Aziraphale reiterates as he stands and walks to his desk. He studies the page over Crowley’s shoulder, but his brain is spinning around. He’s saying things that he has already processed internally and moved past. It often means that sentences are left unfinished aloud. Crowley does not seem bothered; he’s studying the notes at his fingertips.

“The maths are wrong,” the demon says and taps an error on the page. Then a question flickers across his face and he finds his ancient notes. He settles more into Aziraphale’s chair and hunches over the pages. His mouth moves with the numbers and he grunts.

“Look,” he points, “my calculations were off so I tried again.” His finger draws a logical line that shows how his thinking. “Here I stopped because it wasn’t working. I’d have banished all this into the ether at that point and started over.” He leans back to meet Aziraphale’e eye. “Someone can pull things from the ether.”

Aziraphale finally gets a belch out of Elizabeth. “Well done, little one,” he praises. Crowley stretches up and takes her. 

“Angel, look back through there. Are any of the rituals that deal with the ether?”

They switch places. Aziraphale dons his gloves and continues through the books. “Imagine what they’d materialize from the ether… paint from my coat, dirty nappies, old feathers—“

As soon as he says it they both freeze. “We’ve banished our feathers.”

Crowley curses a blue streak. “Oh _bless_ it all—we are fucked.”

Aziraphale’s heart is tattooing in his chest, “Could they have created a being from those?” He looks down at Elizabeth. She could be more of their child than they thought.

Crowley shakes his head vigorously. “They don’t have the technology to reconstruct the DNA yet, but they could have used the barbs to power the spells.” Even as he says it, he’s looking at Elizabeth closely, clearly trying to see their features in her face. With a hum, he rolls the newly miracled pram closer. 

“Seriously, angel, is this the same model that George VI used?” 

Aziraphale sighed, “It’s the newest version, but yes. Some things never go out of style.”

He’s fairly certain that Crowley mutters something about it looking like a hearse, but he pulls back the white linens and settles Elizabeth in it anyway. 

“I banished all sorts of items to the ether,” Aziraphale clarified, bringing them back to the task at hand. 

Crowley rolls the perambulator forward, then pulls it back toward him. The fledgling doesn’t appear to notice, but it seems to be soothing the demon. 

“Bookshop dust by the bucketload, for one,” Aziraphale continues. Crowley purses his lips in thought. 

“I can’t tell you how many mistakes we sent there while we were building; the universe is infinite and we designed it all. Sometimes it was trial and error. If they can work anything from faulty plans, they’re powerful,” he admits. “Plus they’ve got 6000 years of molting from us both, plus a shed or fifty of mine. That’s a lot of occult power.”

“I’m not occult,” Aziraphale argues, without looking up from his task.

“Whatever.”

He finds one reference to the ether and he nearly calls the demon over. However, upon further inspection, it’s clear that it’s written in such a way that the reader would have to already know of its existence and purpose. It is human-written however, not one of the builder’s notes, which gives him a lead.

“I think there is another collection of these rituals. This reads like a sequel,” he observes. Then, thoughtfully, but chasing a previous line of thought, “It would take a good deal of power to recall something we discarded there. It would take more, I should think, the older the item—say discarded diagrams from the star systems.” 

Elizabeth snores and Crowley looks at her affectionately, even as his mind is working on their problem. He moves back to Aziraphale’s side but pulls the pram with him.

“Show us the ritual we broke up.” Aziraphale turns the book so he can read it and watches Crowley’s face twist in disgust.

“It looked a lot bloody like some of those nasties from the 14th-century shit. Blood, fire, a whole lot of hate,” Crowley admits. “Those were completely powered on pain or sacrifice to a demon—sometimes both, for some of those sadistic tarts.”

“Would a murder power such a ritual?”

Crowley winces. “I never did that sort of thing, angel.”

Aziraphale hurries to cover the misinterpretation. “I know that, my dear. I’m just curious for a benchmark.”

The pram wheel squeaks on the hardwood floor as he continues to roll it back and forth. Crowley speaks slowly, weighing his words. 

“Hastur liked to sacrifice virgins. No other reason that he enjoyed knowing that they’d never get to enjoy passionate sex. The practitioners killed them in horrific ways, with lots of pain. If they could deface something holy then it gave an extra kick of power. That’s… pretty much it.”

Aziraphale taps his desk thoughtfully. “So they tried to make her holy for additional power. But to what end? The amount they were dealing with could eliminate you or me from existence.”

Crowley finds a mechanical pencil in the clutter on Aziraphale’s desk. He drops to the floor and makes grabby hands at the angel.

“Paper,” he orders.

Aziraphale stares at him balefully then hands him a yellow legal pad. “You didn’t say the magic word.”

“Now,” Crowley teases and grabs it. He sprawls on his stomach and sets to work immediately. “What was the number on that ritual?”

“You’ve lost me, Crowley. What number?”

The demon looks up at him annoyed. “The joules that rituals were supposed to create.” When Aziraphale continues to stare at him uncomprehendingly, he mutters and stands up to look at the book again. He finds what he needs and returns to his position to begin to write.

His pencil is fast. He mumbles to himself. 

“Show me the page again?” he requests, still muttering. Aziraphale tilts the book down and Crowley studies the circles. 

“Runes here,” he notes. “They can work as an exponent.”

Aziraphale watches the sums come together. He stands suddenly and disappears into the stacks. Somewhere he keeps the old texts on human’s understandings of Enochian symbols. They’re often erroneous, but if he has learned anything in his long time, it’s that belief in something that can give it power. He collects the texts and returns to his desk.

The sun is breaking on the horizon, but it’s still dark outside. The buildings around them keep the light away. Aziraphale frowns when he sees his little family. The pram rocks itself with a demonic miracle and Crowley is sprawled across the floor. Are they safe here?

Absently, Aziraphale snaps and the kettle boils. He needs the comfort of this routine. He sets the books he collected on his desk chair. 

“Tea?” he asks. Crowley waves the angel away, which he takes as a “yes, with sugar, if you please”. 

He returns quickly with two mugs of tea. 

“The maths don’t work,” Crowley complains. “They produced enough power to open a black hole, but we saw no evidence of that. Where did it go?”

Aziraphale bends down and sets Crowley’s mug by his legal pad. “They drew enough power from an infant to collapse a star?” he asks incredulously. 

“And then disappeared the power. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.” He grabs his mug and sips from the too-hot tea. “By this logic, more than one of them should’ve died. You and I should not have been able to get close and Lizzie…”

“Should have fried. She was both the source and the conduit,” Aziraphale susses aloud. An idea occurs, “What’s the next builder note and accompanying ritual?”

Crowley climbs up to his knees to grab the grimoire. He flips forward in the book. “Dagon looks like she was working on specific heat capacity in deep seawater molecules.” Much like with his old notes, he traces the line of her thinking. “She started with the Earth numbers, but here, see she changed to whichever planet she was designing for.” 

“Either way, she scrapped it for some reason,” Aziraphale offers, trying to add something to a conversation that seems more nostalgic for Crowley than helpful.

Crowley nods and flips the page, “Yep, she forgot to figure for pressure changes and then used the wrong data.” Next, he studies the ritual. “This is about drawing out the power that’s locked into an animate object. Oh fuck,” he groans and pushes the book away. 

Aziraphale studies his face, “The one about the cat?”

Crowley nods, sickened. “You read ‘em all already, I take it?”

The angel sips his tea. “I did.”

“And you’ve already compartmentalized?” Crowley looks out the window but is still pale.

“You know that I’m good at it,” he admits and moves to stand over the demon. Crowley leans his head onto Aziraphale’s hip and the angel cups the back of his neck. “I’m unclear why the rituals do not move in a logical order.”

“Logical in this instance, you mean, because nothing in this makes sense.”

“Indeed. I believe that was about drawing power out of another human. It looked similar to what they did in the circles for Elizabeth, but in a different form.” He returns to the book himself and turns pages.

“I think the numbers are for an adult human,” Crowley offers, refusing to look at the spellbook or his notes.

Aziraphale hums and continues to search the pages. “There doesn’t seem to be an answer to where the power went or why they wanted it in either ritual. In fact, beyond standing in the circles during the rituals, it doesn’t even suggest that the practicers could absorb any of it.”

“Or where they got access to the _blessed_ ether.”

“Or learned about ethereal golden blood.”

Crowley rubs his face on Aziraphale’s sleep pants. “Or how they made a fledgling.”

“We have more questions than answers, it seems. Perhaps we should seek out the first grimoire,” Aziraphale suggests, brushing his thumb through Crowley’s short hair and sipping his tea. 

“You think we could trace the murders back? Or the practicers?” Crowley huffs. “Bloody long shot.”

Aziraphale offers a half-hearted glare, “Do you have a better idea?”

“Drop this fucking thing into deep space and take Lizzie for a walk. Show her off to the ducks,” Crowley suggests. “Might make ‘em jealous. Especially that goose.”

“That goose hates you.”

“Mmm, not really. It’s covering up its deep devotion to me by acting like its feathers are always ruffled,” Crowley rises from his knees.

“It chases you and hisses,” Aziraphale replies, unmovingly. “Last time, you had to hide in the Bentley.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” Crowley hisses. “It was a tactically retreat from its unrelenting amorous advances.”

Aziraphale’s lip twitches in a smile, but he hides it quickly. “We do need to find that other spellbook, my dear boy. If they can pull items from the ether then there is nothing stopping them from doing it again for our feathers.”

Crowley nods absently. “Or make her a sibling,” he adds darkly. Aziraphale’s hands ball into fists. They exchange a look—knowing, but hard. 

Elizabeth gives a little hiccup and they both look at her. Her tiny dove gray wing twitches in her sleep. The one that is bound does not move as much. 

“If they were trying to pull power from her, which type would they start with?” Crowley asks suddenly, looking back at his scribbled calculations. 

“Her core is just energy,” the angel replies, uncertain. “It isn’t marked like ours. She doesn’t have a true self.” 

“You said she’s so unique that upstairs didn’t even hear her. What if they couldn’t because those idiots were burning it out of her?” Crowley asks, looking from the infant to the Hellfire-glazed knife. “What if they were in the process of damning her?”

“She was falling?” Aziraphale asks, alarmed. “She doesn’t feel—“

“Yeah, I know. No brimstone, but what if that was the goal? Hellfire knife—and doesn’t that create new questions—but use it to pull out the divine core—“

“If she’s divine, then the blade would kill her.”

“You said she doesn’t have the same true self as us, maybe that’s where things different. Ripping Her grace from us is what happened to us down below when we fell. If that’s what they were trying to do, then they could use literal holy power to… do whatever they were doing. In the meantime, then nothing is going to heal that burn.” He looks down at Elizabeth’s middle. 

Aziraphale frowns as an idea spins in his head. “Something will, but you cannot help.”

That’s how the angel finds himself snapping into the nave of Westminster Cathedral with Elizabeth in his arms. She grumbles as he locates the stoup, built into the wall, with his eyes and hurries toward it. 

Crowley’s words about holy relics and water repeat in his mind.

“If I’m close to it, I can feel it. S’like a sunburn. If she’s really on her way to fallen, she should react too. Test it first.”

Before he does that, though, he wants to ensure it’s pure. Once, he gave a thermos of the holiest of waters to his beloved. There is no way to retrieve it from Heaven’s fonts now, so he’ll have to make do.

The holy water is still in its stone stoup. It’s not a big bowl, but she is not a large baby. Aziraphale drips his fingers into the water and brings it to his mouth for a taste. With a grunt, he blesses the font. The water is doubly blessed now, but still not as purely holy as he would like. Even still, he unwraps his daughter’s swaddle and finds her impossibly tiny hand. 

“Hold on, my little love,” he whispers before looking up at the altar and its Baldacchino. “Help me heal her,” he whispers to the Almighty. He wonders if She hears him and he dips his pinkie into the water, then holds it over the stoup as most of the liquid drips back off.

Then, hesitantly, he touches the smallest amount of this holy water to her hand. She does not react. The water droplet rolls off her skin and onto the floor. Slowly, he touches the same water to the cut on her forehead. Instantly, it stitches closed.

With a sigh of relief, he strips her.

“This is going to be cold,” he warns and cradles her head. She screams when he sets her into the stoup. 

“I did say,” he reminds her. He holds her with one hand and uses the other to cup water and pour it onto her skin.

The sigil cut into her middle steams and it makes his pause. Behind it, though, lays unbroken skin. Getting her wings wet takes maneuvering that she is not willing to assist with. However, as the bruises disappear and the bones reset, she relaxes a little more. Finally, Elizabeth is drenched but healed. He wraps her in the giant beach towel he brought, then grabs all her clothes.

“Let’s go see Nonny. No doubt he’s worried sick by now,” Aziraphale whispers, rocking her to soothe her tears. He snaps and the holy water in the stoup completely evaporates, then he transports them back into the bookshop.

Crowley runs to them the moment they appear. “Wait!” Aziraphale warns, taking a step away from him. “Let me get her completely dry.”

Nodding, Crowley wrings his hands. “Did it work?”

“Like a treat, didn’t it, my love?” he asks the baby. She screams. “Bones and cuts all healed. Who knew baptism could be so restorative?” he jokes carefully wipes each part of her dry.

“So they did pull the divinity from her,” Crowley muses as he watches. Aziraphale tucks her back into her clothes and snaps the beach towel into the ether.

“They tried anyway,” Aziraphale corrects. Crowley reaches out to touch her head, but Aziraphale is still hesitant to give her to Crowley.

“She may still have some holy water on her,” he warns. Crowley nods, uncomfortably, and strides to the backroom to warm her bottle. 

Aziraphale follows him, trying to wrap Elizabeth in her swaddle as efficiently and tightly as Crowley had. She wails. Crowley exits the backroom and meets them by Aziraphale’s desk.

“I’m hurrying, honey,” Crowley replies, shaking the formula into the warm water. 

Aziraphale sinks into his chair and studies Crowley’s legal pad from upside down. The page of calculations is torn free and cast aside, instead, in the neatest handwriting Aziraphale has ever seen the demon use is a list of six names. Crowley holds out the bottle to him but looks longingly at the fledgling. 

Aziraphale glances down at her and then holds her out. “I think she’s dry? Just be careful.”

Crowley smiles and collects their daughter. “Had your first swim, eh?” he asks as he tips the nipple into her mouth. She latches on quickly and the demon settles into the corner of his favorite sofa. He watches her nurse.

“What’s this?” Aziraphale asks, picking up the legal pad from the floor. 

“I called in my ledger—“

“You contacted Hell?” Aziraphale yelps.

Elizabeth jumps but Crowley gets her attention with the bottle again. 

“No, just a spell. Every demon has a list of names of their damned. I just summoned the last six of mine,” he looks over at the list with a raised eyebrow. “Wasn’t sure it would work, to be honest. We got lucky.”

Aziraphale stares at him. “I hope that no one in the paperwork department down there has an eye out for any of your work. You’ve made quite a bit of splash down there in the last twenty-four hours. A paperwork request might bring more unwanted attention.”

Crowley smiles, softly. “They’ve written me out of their bad books. I won’t do anything else like that, I promise.”

Aziraphale looks at him disbelievingly. His eyes soften, however, as he answers. “Hmm, I would expect so. You’re retired.”

Crowley looks down at the fledgling in his arms. “Anyway, there are the names of those at the circle. I thought we’d keep an eye on the news for a few days and see where their names pop up. Missing persons and so forth.”

Aziraphale taps his lips with his finger. “We need to research for a knife murder also. The grimoire suggested that pulling Elizabeth from the firmament and completing the ritual we saw at Arthur’s Seat must be within three days. This is all recent.”

Crowley twists about, looking for his mobile. He holds the bottle with his chin and snaps. The mobile appears in his hand. 

“I wonder if I should manifest some functioning breasts just so I have a free hand,” he mutters.

Aziraphale studies him. The image this paints makes him hum huskily. 

“You are lovely, my darling. I’m not sure I’d let you leave the bed for a few days if you were to do so, however.”

Crowley’s cheeks pink and he looks up from his mobile screen. He’s tapping at it with only his thumb, with the bottle still wedged between his chin and his sternum. 

“Is that a ‘yes’ to body modification?” he asks.

Aziraphale rests his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand. “You are lovely in every form, as I always say. If that is what you want, Crowley, I will be happy to,” he pauses and gives a hungry grin, “inspect your new additions.”

Crowley’s blush deepens and he looks back to his screen, then over at Elizabeth.

“You heard nothing,” he commands her, before tapping at his mobile again. Aziraphale watches them together and love pours off him. Elizabeth sighs as she feels it.

“It might be harder in the long run,” Aziraphale admits, still drinking in the sight on his sofa. Who knew his heart could be so full?

“I’ve been a wet nurse before,” Crowley reminds. Aziraphale nods. The demon has told him this, but he’s never seen it for himself. 

“You’d have to miracle in the milk every time she’d need to be fed. It might be less work to mix the formula.”

Crowley frowns, “Nah, I’d just mess with my hormones. I’ve always produced my own, ya know. Kind of a bonding thing with my babies.”

Aziraphale’s mind whirls. Crowley has tried on male and female forms before, as well as every blend that made sense to him at the time. All have suited him based on how he felt at that moment. Changing body chemistry, however, is not something that Aziraphale knows he can do.

“You adjusted your own hormones,” he says, but his voice lilts, suggesting it was a question.

Crowley gives a bottle-limited nod and continues to scroll on his mobile. 

“I don’t think,” Aziraphale lets his sentence draw out, “that I can do that.”

At this, Crowley lowers his mobile and drops it onto the cushion next to him. He takes the bottle and sets it aside, then shoulders Elizabeth to burp. 

“Yeah, well, like I said. Made different,” when the fledgling won’t burp, he moves her onto his knee, then holds her chin and chest with one hand, and rubs and pats her back with the other. When this still isn’t enough, he bounces his knee as he does this. 

Aziraphale taps his finger to his lips again and watches Crowley. “Could you pull something from the firmament now?”

Crowley raises an eyebrow and pauses his patting and bouncing. “Dunno. Never tried.” He returns to burping her.

“What would be the simplest thing to pull from the firmament? I mean, back in the day, could you have made a fledgling?”

Crowley considers both questions, but only answers the latter. “I could have, sure, it would have taken a lot of planning. I needed to run all the numbers and all the plans first. It was usually a team of us who did the prep, then we’d pull it together as a group. We did much larger stuff though. I might be able to do a being by myself.”

Elizabeth burps and Crowley grins. “That’s my girl!”

She spits up. He sighs and snaps it away. 

Aziraphale leans forward. “Pull something from the firmament, Crowley.”

“The simplest items are very tiny or invisible,” he reminds. “Otherwise, I’d have to spend time preparing. Lots of power and planning that.”

“Then do something tiny,” Aziraphale suggests.

Crowley meets his eye and then holds out the fledgling to him. Aziraphale pulls her into his arms and she snuffles. Crowley, on the other hand, closes his eyes and concentrates. He snaps.

Nothing changes.

Aziraphale looks around and then back at Crowley. He slumps down onto the sofa, tired. Then holds out his hand open and shows a tiny sliver of metal.

“Aluminum isotope,” he says, his voice weary. “The non-radioactive type.”

“But that wore you out. There is no way that one demon did this.” 

“I told you that,” Crowley complains. He looks at Elizabeth, “Baba doesn’t listen when he’s being stubborn.”

“Baba loves you and Baba loves your Nonny,” Aziraphale says to the baby. Crowley chuckles softly. 

The angel smiles at him. “You should rest then.” 

“Someone promised to keep me in bed. I even earned it,” Crowley draws waving his piece of aluminum. 

Aziraphale lifts the baby and holds his hand out to his lover.

“Very well then, let’s see if I can reward you.” He tugs Crowley to his feet and guides him to the spiral staircase up to their flat and their bed. 

“I hope we don’t scar the little one,” he says teasingly as they climb the steps.

“From what I understand of human psychology, your parents are supposed to make you need therapy. I think being in the room while we have sex should traumatize our kid well enough.” 

Aziraphale stops on the step and turns to kiss his partner deeply and hotly. “Oh good, because your reward sounds too lovely to pass up.” He bites Crowley’s lower lip. 

Crowley practically purrs. “C’mon, angel, take me to bed.” 

London wakes up outside their walls. Elizabeth slumbers in her cradle. Their troubles weigh on them, but for a while, they forget about dark magic and lost power. Aziraphale and Crowley make love in their bed. 


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley always bitched about being summoned in the 14th Century. He never mentioned that it actually hurt. Beelzebub feels like their lower half is being yanked to the left, while the top goes right. Everything inside them warps and tangles. Sharp pains spark down their back. 

Screaming doesn’t help—more’s the pity, because they are screaming themselves hoarse. 

Then they appear in the center of a summoning circle. The chalk burns their hands when they brace their fall. Salt seers into their knees and palms. A coven stands around the circle with hungry eyes.

“It’s worked! It’s worked!” one woman yells, delighted. She dances around and is shushed by some older men.

“It worked _before_ , remember?” he snaps and the woman flips him the vee. Beelzebub is not impressed. They try to cover up for their previous screaming by getting directly to business.

“Right, so, what do you want? Let’s make this deal and get on with it. I have a meeting in two hours,” Beelzebub drawls, all their letters buzzing. 

Another woman, with eyes like glittering coal, steps from the shadows. 

“You will yield your being to me so that I may forge a new body for my power,” she says with a sickly sweet smile. 

Beelzebub throws back their head and laughs. This is like every terrible B-reel movie that Hell shows on movie nights. The villains have no redeeming qualities and no creativity beyond world domination. 

The woman stares at them and then pulls a blade from her pocket. It shines. It has touched Hellfire. Beelzebub stares at it, slightly unnerved.

“Hastur told us your name, Prince,” the woman says, holding the knife out so that they can better see the blade. Beelzebub assumes that Hastur sold them out in some sort of last-chance-to-escape-with-his-toad-intact scheme. 

“He could not power our needs. He died trying. Dashed out like a candle.”

This brings Beelzebub up short. They reach into themselves for their inner sight and cast about. There is the scent of brimstone here, under the tones of fear. Not just any sort of fear, either, _infernal_ fear. With this second sight, they see the aura painted around the woman before them—they see the visage of a toad. A human has somehow killed and absorbed a Duke of Hell. 

A chill runs through the prince. 

Days pass. The woman and her coven coax and torture. It’s nothing compared to what they dish out down below, though. Beelzebub isn’t really phased. 

“You’re going to form an infant for us from the firmament,” the woman declares.

This makes Beelzebub freeze and blink.

“Come again?” they buzz.

“A fledgling,” the woman clarifies. “Robert will sacrifice himself for this new being. A vessel, a port for our power.”

Beelzebub just stares. “I can’t.”

One of the coven taunts, “A demon with a conscious.” 

The prince makes a dismissive sound, “Not at all, I just can’t. I fell from Heaven, no ability left to build. All the builders fell.”

The woman that is clearly in charge around here holds up a stack of paper. She holds them so that Beelzebub can read them.

“But you wrote these?” she asks.

“Not me. Some demon did, back before they fell. They were an idiot too, it appears,” they buzz and point at the page, “they can’t do simple sums.”

Irritated, the woman tosses the papers back onto the table. 

“Then I’ll use you for power too, like Hastur.” Then the woman spins on her heel and marches up to the edge of the chalk line. “Stay put. We’ll be back.”

And then the coven disappears for days. It’s boring. Beelzebub tries turning into maggots and then a swarm of flies to escape their bindings. The concentric circles have no give whatsoever. It’s a true trap.

When the woman returns, she comes with candles and bells. It takes three tries, but then Beelzebub is being absorbed into the woman. That’s the only way they can think to describe it. The magic flows over them and they leave their mortal frame and shoot through the air like molecules. Then they’re inside the woman—Imani—spinning around like they’re sucked down a drain. For a single moment, they’re one. Everything Imani knows so does the prince. Unfortunately, the other is also true. 

Barriers forged from Imani’s very soul fall into place and Beelzebub is limited in their movements and access. They can no longer communicate with anyone but the woman. The prince tries to reason and bribe.

But Imani didn’t bargain. She took.

They learned that as she pillages Beelzebub’s memories and abilities for their building skills.

“The holy grace,” Imani rages. 

One of the men—Robert—tries to comfort her, “What is it?”

“The demon wasn’t lying. They can’t create. God ripped the power out of them.”

Beelzebub tries to correct this, but it’s too late. Imani orders her coven to research powerful angels. Beelzebub tries to blank their mind. They’re not sure that they’re successful when the coven begins to draw sigils for summoning Gabriel. He appears in the summoning circle completely infuriated. 

“I demand that you release me at once, you humans!” he orders, but he’s clutching at his side in pain. 

Imani wastes no time. She orders the drawing of the ritual bindings and absorbs Gabriel immediately. 

“Fuckfeathers!” Beelzebub shouts to him and he meets them in this strange consciousness they share. (Crowley has always called him “Fuckfeathers”, just as he referred to Michael as “Wankwings”. It was sort of affectionate, but completely rude--just as a nickname should be.)

“Oh, it’s you,” he sneers. “What did you do—“

“Do? I just got sucked in here the same as you. Now, let’s get out of here,” the prince declares, already planning to use their combined powers to shoot free.

Imani encloses them both in separate soul chambers immediately. It’s sort of a shame because it keeps them from tussling, for certain, but they’re reasonably sure that they could take an Archangel. The woman ignores them both and begins to draw out the plans for the fledgling. A photograph of an infant lays on the table, clearly what they’re using as their model.

“Did you know about this?” Gabriel rages as he sees the plan being drawn up.

“Only when she told me, like some cartoon villain.”

Gabriel’s voice suggests annoyance, but curiosity. “Cartoon?”

“Seriously, Fuckfeathers? Do you just come down here to run?”

“Stop calling me that. I am the Messenger of the Lord and an envoy from Heaven will surely arrive soon. Besides, I deserve respect,” he snaps, but Beelzebub can tell there is a certain understanding there. If they are still picking at him, there is a chance that they both might survive this.

That nearly changes when Imani rips a portion of holy grace from Gabriel’s core the next night. Gabriel tucks in around himself protectively and Beelzebub tries a pep talk.

“C’mon, you wanker, don’t let the side down. Buck up, Fuckfeathers” they drawled, aiming for something encouraging but not too soft. 

“We’re not on the same side,” Gabriel growled, like some feral, cornered beast. “You’re evil.”

“Am not. I’m damned. There’s a difference,” they suggest and then can no longer communicate. 

Their skills and abilities are forced into service. They both scream in agony as Imani yanks the fledgling from the firmament. At that moment, the barriers that separate them thins. Beelzebub reaches out for him and he touches his fingers to their face.

“Stay strong,” he states and the soul barrier closes them off from each other again.

Beelzebub thinks about this for the following day. Imani is drained and sleeps, so the prince leans on their barrier and waits for the Archangel to notice them again. 

“I’m trying to stay strong, you know,” they whisper. “I’m pretty afraid of what I’ve seen in this psychopath’s head though. Extreme quest for power. The coven’s no better. They have lost all sense of morals, ya know? And for a demon to stay that... well.” 

Gabriel doesn’t reply. He’s been different since the holy grace was forcibly taken from him. Beelzebub waits in case he wants to talk. 

When the coven tortures the fledgling, however, things become clearer. For one, any moment of pain that the infant endures rebounds onto Imani. It should make them feel some justice, but instead, it just boils their anger hotter and louder.

“What the actual fuck? That’s an infant! Satan’s sake, stop! Holy fuck! Stop!” they railed as the baby screamed. “And what idiot used themselves as the model for their own sacrifice!”

The knife is heated with Hellfire and licks at the eternal damned state of Beelzebub’s core. The knife is draining them, just as it is burning away some part of the fledgling’s being. Gabriel reaches out then. 

“Easy, now. Rest,” he soothes, as he tries to break past the barrier and come to them. 

Tears race down their cheeks. Pain, oh the pain, but also the helplessness. Who the fuck tortures a fledgling? The pain rebounds in their head, each of them feeling all the cuts and bruises. Imani takes to her bed.

Of course, then things get worse. The coven, tired of Imani’s personal power goals, steal the grimoire she’s written, and take the baby with them. Gabriel and the prince are held hostage as the woman rages and screams. 

They are each privy to the ritual as the coven tries to drain the holy energy from the infant. The pain is excoriating. Beelzebub screams just as loudly as they did when they fell. Only this time, it burns in a new way. 

“Mother, mother, help them. Help them!” Gabriel sobs and begs for the Almighty to intervene. 

As the traitors stalk in and kidnap the fledgling, the prince realizes that Gabriel wasn’t just begging on the baby’s behalf. It’s unsettling, but then, so are many things. They tried to help the time move faster.

“I spy, with my little eye,” they buzz.

“Which eye? Which plane are you looking at?” Gabriel whines.

Clearly, angels are idiots.

“It’s a human game. You guess what I’m looking at—“

“A vase. No, a spleen. No—“

“Would you shut up? I’m going to give you clues—“

“Huh, I bet you’ll cheat. I don’t like this game.” 

Beelzebub would roll their eyes if they could. Unfortunately, they don’t quite have control anymore. They’re in some sort of strange in-between. They are still their own beings, but they look out from Imani’s eyes and move with her. This is all better than the alternative, of course.

Imani reaches into them when Crowley arrives. Beelzebub has never been so happy to see that flash bastard traitor in their life. Of course, that’s when the human manipulates her control on their infernal powers. Gabriel shouts to them as they scream in agony.

Crowley’s knees buckle and he goes down under Imani’s will. Then Gabriel screams as his holy core is pushed into Imani’s hand. It burns Crowley’s cheek. 

Beelzebub cannot find it in themselves to celebrate. The fledgling is here—of course, the traitors saved it, they cannot leave anything alone. 

Gabriel pants with the aftershocks as they watch, helplessly, as Aziraphale and Crowley learn the depth of this charade. 

“Idiots,” Gabriel snarls. “She’ll just absorb them too and then she’ll have even more power.”

Beelzebub sighs, exhausted from the pain. “They’re not much power compared to you and me. She burned through Hastur like a candle. They’ll go out the same way.”

Gabriel is silent, but then he pushes on the boundary between them. “Beelzebub, don’t give up, sweetheart.”

And everything in their damned head stops buzzing.

“Stay with me,” Gabriel begs. “We can win this. We can fight her.”

“What did you call me, Fuckfeathers?” Beelzebub finally manages, but it comes out an octave higher than they planned.

Gabriel makes some sort of pained noise. 

“Oh, you fucking wanker,” Beelzebub gripes, “don’t make me fall for you. You can’t even play I Spy correctly.”

Gabriel makes another whiney gasp. “I spy with my little eye,” he finally forces out, “something black and red.”

“Crowley, who looks like he’s going to pass out,” Beelzebub admits confidently, but begrudgingly.

“See? I know how to play,” Gabriel amends, still sounding out of sorts.

“Bugger me,” Beelzebub groans. 


	4. Chapter 4

The yellow legal pad with six listed names taunts Crowley. Police reports were filled the day before, listing three of them as “missing” by their families. They each hailed from a different town or village. They did not work together at the same job. They didn’t drink together at any local and they didn’t play on the same cricket team. So far, they have found no connection between any of them.

Elizabeth is strapped into her car seat in the backseat of the Bentley. (The Bentley did not have seatbelts in its backseat before, but expectations and demonic miracles solved that.) She’s sucking on a dummy and blinking sleepily. Aziraphale is inside Harbledown’s local chippy, gathering intel and snacks. Crowley doesn’t expect much on the former, but as for the latter, he hopes the cod is hot. 

He glares at the yellow legal pad that sits on the dashboard. They’ve come to the outskirts of Canterbury because of Rachel Acharya. She was a library’s assistant at the University of Kent, but they’ve learned nothing of use from her supervisor—except that she loved this chip shop.

“What do you think, Lizzie?” he asks rhetorically. Her brown eyes blink slowly in the mirror that hangs over her car seat. She was asleep while they were driving. No doubt that will be the case again once they’re on the road again. 

“Will Baba find everything we need to know? Will he remember to salt the fish or just douse everything in Malt vinegar? Only time with tell.”

He taps the steering wheel in time with Vivaldi’s “A Kind of Magic”, proof that this CD has been in the Bentley too long. The door to the chippy swings open and Aziraphale hurries out, his cheeks are bright and his smile exuberant. It makes Crowley’s lips curl into a smile without any conscious thought. 

“Any luck, angel?” he asks as the door to the car opens. 

“And how!” He sets the takeaway box on the seat between them and closes the door. He passes Crowley a flimsy white plastic fork, before opening the box and digging into the fish. He pops the bite into his mouth and opens it again in pain. 

“Hot!” he cries and puffs air in and out over his burned tongue with an assortment of silly noises.

Crowley watches all this, his expression torn between bemused and besotted. 

“Very tasty!” Aziraphale finally decides after being able to swallow.

“How can you tell?” Crowley teases and selects a chip. “Your tastebuds are all burned away.”

“Just the right temperature in the oil,” Aziraphale waxes and takes another piece of fish. This time he blows on it before biting into it. “Yes, absolutely delectable.”

Crowley grabs the rest of the hunk of fish Aziraphale has cut and bites into it. Hot oil floods his mouth, along with delicate white fish and crunchy batter. It’s not bad. The heat doesn’t bother him—he was born anew in flames.

“‘Sgood,” he admits and finishes the fillet. The angel smiles proudly and selects a chip with extra vinegar soaked into it. 

“Did you get any news?” Crowley asks. He watches, memorized, as Aziraphale licks his fingertips. 

“Mmmhmm, turns out Ms. Acharya came here every Wednesday and collected an order for eight people then went to her weekly prayer meeting at Summergrove Hall,” he says conspiratorially. His eyes shine. “Only the chippy owner seems to think they were doing witchcraft.”

Crowley selects another chip and looks at his partner over his sunglasses. “And the owner of the fish and chip shop is an expert on these matters?”

Aziraphale takes the chip from Crowley’s fingers and bites into it. A playful grin dances across his mouth. Crowley glares. 

“Little old ladies are the best spies, I have found,” the angel replies. He leans over and kisses Crowley on the lips. “Now, my dear, Summergrove Hall is not far from here. What do you say to some detective work?”

Crowley steals his chip back and shoves it into his mouth before starting the car. 

“Of course, Doctor Watson,” he agrees around a mouthful of fried potato.

As they drive, they bicker about which of them is Sherlock Holmes. Just a bit down the road, Elizabeth fusses from the backseat. Aziraphale climbs over the front seat, nearly kicking Crowley in the head as he does. He finds a bottle in their nappy bag. 

“If you were ever considering actually breastfeeding,” Aziraphale comments, “now would be helpful.”

“I can’t nurse and drive at the same time, angel,” Crowley replies while rolling his eyes. 

He takes a left at the sign for Summergrove Hall. It’s a Regency-era white stucco building with neoclassical columns. Crowley did not understand humans’ obsession with that period’s architecture. In his opinion, replicating it again and again just destroyed what made it special. He slows his speed as they rolled up the gravel drive and around to the servant’s entrance. He might be doing detective work, but he also wasn’t going to burst in the front door with an infant. 

He considers Elizabeth as he parks. In the rearview mirror, Aziraphale is watching her eat with absolute adoration. His white-blond hair sparkles in the sunlight. 

“I’ll go have a look around,” Crowley decides, his fingers already on the door handle. “You two stay here.”

“That is not—“ Aziraphale starts to argue.

“Listen, angel, if they’re the ones who hurt her—who summoned her—then they’ll have some kind of containment. I assume it’d work on you too. Plus, I don’t want her back in there and you’re better at protecting than I am,” Crowley bulldozes through his argument and watches Aziraphale take it all in. 

“Anathema once said that according to the magic community, there are only angels and fallen angels. They do not consider demons in their own class. If that’s the case, then you could be trapped too,” Aziraphale frets.

Crowley stretches over the backseat and clasps the angel’s hand. “Good thing I’ve got imagination then, huh? And that you can come to rescue me if that happens.”

Aziraphale looks excited at the prospect. “I’ve never gotten to storm in and save you, have I?”

Crowley smiles at him and slips out of the car. As soon as the driver’s side door closes he snaps. Barriers encircle the car—no one in or out.

“Crowley!” he hears Aziraphale yell, betrayed, and angry.

“Don’t fret, angel. If I’m in mortal peril, it’ll let you out. Otherwise, sit tight.” Then he turns and legs it to the back entrance. 

Crowley knows he’ll deal with a tongue-lashing later, but right now, keeping them safe is far more important. It smells like the firmament here: the strange tinge of ozone and freshly sheared copper mixed with dirt and divine light. He dreams of it sometimes. It makes him miss Her for just a moment.

He kicks in the servant’s door and strides into the long-forgotten hall. No one works below stairs anymore so he walks through spider webs and dust to find the way up to the living floors of the gentry. He takes these steps two-at-a-time, his long legs stretching as do his demonic senses.

One mortal on the first floor.

With someone totally immortal. It makes the hair on his arms prickle and stand on end. It feels boundless, but he cannot tell if it is of Heaven or Hell, which is also concerning.

He shakes off his worry and strides into the front parlor. The pocket doors are slid open. A man in his forties kneels on the floor before the immortal being. Crowley’s haughty stride lurches and he stops walking, flat-footed in the doorway.

Elizabeth, or who she will be in many years, turns to face him. She’s a grown woman, perhaps in her thirties. His black curls are elegantly styled into twists, which she had bound back with a beaded headband. She’s dressed in a long blue sundress and simple stud earrings. Her feet are bare.

Her eyes, however, are startling. Unlike the dark brown eyes of the fledgling in the car seat, her’s are solid purple-blue-black without any iris. Somehow the colors are familiar, but he cannot say why.

“Hello, Nonny,” she greets and opens her hand to him. She exerts her will on him and the demon is forced to kneel. “I was wondering when you’d bring my vessel back to me.”

“Lizzie,” Crowley gasps through the pressure of her will, but aiming for levity, “you’re two people. It’s going to take some explaining to your Baba for that. Will you want two holiday gifts? He does love the shop for Hanukah.”

She walks toward him, slow and graceful. The skirt bunches around her legs as she moves. She crouches before him and looks into his eyes. 

“A demon who loves. Your Mother will not believe it,” she says before reaching out and cupping his face. “The Prince is certainly very confused.”

It burns. Her very palm sears his skin, but he leans into it anyway. “Your grandmother is a bitch. However, I’d like to think we raised you better than that. You _know_ love, little one.”

Elizabeth jerks her hand back. “I am not your daughter, Nonny. I am not your Lizzie. I am Imani and I do not need a family—especially one who has only had my vessel for three days and expects loyalty. I don’t like foolish people.”

Crowley chokes on a breath of air as the burn moves away from his face. “I respect that, little one. But you need to know that you’ve got two parents and we adore you. Even when you shit all over the inside of your car seat and, then again through two changes of clothes.” 

She stares at him, bewildered. “That infant is just a vessel. It has no personality. It holds all the holy energy I need.”

“Except you fucked up, Lizzie. The energy numbers didn’t work out, did they? All that power went somewhere… not into any living being,” Crowley notes, thinking of his calculations. “And, worse, you nearly damned the vessel. If we hadn’t shown up the fledgling would have Fallen and then you’d have a different sort of power to mess with.” 

Her eyebrows clench together and her glare focuses on him. “It wouldn’t have happened.”

“You see, this is the thing about going from mortal to immortal, you’ve still got hubris,” he sneers. “I was there. I helped hang the stars—I bound the atoms and spun the electrons until they made the heavens. I did it with Her blessing and Her pleasure. And She still damned me. I don’t want anyone to suffer through that. Especially you.”

The edges of her eyes flare indigo, then resettles to black. “How can I fall? I’m no angel.”

As if summoned, using superhuman strength, Aziraphale kicks in the pair of front doors. They swing open with a crash and the angel stands there with the Bentley’s tire iron in his hand and the fledgling strapped to his chest in the baby sling.

“No, but your Baba is. And he’ll kick your ass if you don’t calm the fuck down,” Crowley declares. “Sort of like those parents always say in films: ‘I brought you into this world and I can take you out’? Only he’ll be more passive-aggressive about it.”

Aziraphale, on the other hand, is frozen. He stares at the woman that kneels with Crowley.

“Elizabeth?” he breaths and lowers the tire iron. “You’re all grown up. Oh, my lovely girl, you’re beautiful.”

Imani stares back, shocked at his words. She seems to shake it off.

“Give me the vessel,” she finally says, breaking through whatever moment began there.

“Nah,” Crowley decides and stands weakly, “I think we’ll keep her. She’s finally not panicking every time we pick her up. Traumatic events in infancy can alter the conscious, you know. We’re trying to undo some of the harm already in place.”

Imani jumps up, angrily. “She is not a person. She is a fusion of my being, my will, and magical power.”

“Pulled straight from the firmament, yeah, we know. Which is why she’s an angel fledgling,” Crowley remarks. “But you figured all that out by listening to us through her, right?”

Aziraphale looks down at the little one strapped to his chest. “You could split your physical being, but not your consciousness. Curious.” Then he cocks his head, like a bird. “ _Gabriel_?” he asks astonished.

Imani’s eyes flash all violet before returning to all black. Crowley’s mouth falls open.

“You absorbed an Archangel? Holy fuck,” he finally says.

Imani growls and fights back control over her eyes. Only then, they flash bright, light blue, and Crowley wheels backward.

“Lord Beelzebub? Are you in there?”

Their voice issues from Imani’s mouth before she can reign in control again. 

The Prince buzzes, “It is I, you idiot snake. Now get the fuck out of here before she burns you from the inside out.”

There is a pregnant moment there. Questions flow through Crowley’s head, one after the other. 

Imani decides to interject at this point, “They’re wearing themselves out just by talking to you. It won’t take much, Nonny, for me to destroy them and fully envelop their powers.”

Crowley looks over at the fledgling and then up into Aziraphale’s face. His brow is furrowed as he turns the problem over in his mind.

“Oh, but you _cannot_ take their powers fully can you?” the angel suddenly says, like he’s realized a great truth. “They’re too different than your mortal self.”

“I am in control. Now, you will return the blade you took from the mountain top and give me the vessel,” Imani declares, apparently tired of arguing. 

“Did you force Beelzy or that stupid toad to make the Hellfire?” Crowley asks, before stumbling over to grab onto an antique armchair.

Imani watches him then looks over at Aziraphale and the fledgling. “I am not a villain in a movie. I will not monolog.” 

Crowley waves widely. “Ah, I’m a demon. Can’t get more devilish than me and I always find that monologuing is good fun. Hamlet liked it and you can’t argue with Hamlet. Am I right?”

Imani blinks. Aziraphale seems to finally get with the picture and moves over to stand next to Crowley’s armchair.

“We saw it when no one enjoyed it. It took a demonic miracle to make it popular, if you’d believe that,” the angel is talking down to the little one strapped to his chest. It makes Imani shiver.

Crowley cocks his head. “Do you hear us in duplicate? Or is it an echo?” He reaches over and snaps his fingers next to the fledgling’s head. 

Both Elizabeth and Imani react to the sound, thus ignoring the miracle that Crowley uses. The human kneeling on the floor screams as hands claw through the floor and drag him into Hell. Imani startles and walks to the place where he’d been. The floor is replaced, but now bears Crowley’s sigil in the floorboards. 

“Sorry, but he was already marked for down there. It seemed a waste to make them wait. I mean the other six of your little coven are already there; must keep the band together, right?” He looks at Imani over his sunglasses then reclines in the chair. “Plus, the Prince you have captured will be right pissed when they’re out and that little mortal won’t want to see that. Satan, _I_ don’t want to see that.”

“Little one, you’ve warped your soul with this magic,” Aziraphale interjects, sadly. “Now release the Archangel; he can help me restore it. I always believe in redemption.”

“He sure does. Loves those stupid Defoe books,” Crowley grumbles.

“ _Moll Flanders_ is a perfectly balanced novel—“

“Shut up,” Imani snarls. “Give me the vessel.”

“No, I am sorry, dear girl, but our daughter is not going back to you,” Aziraphale declares. 

“She’s _me_ , you idiot,” Imani shouts.

Crowley sits up in his chair. No one insults his angel. Scales ripple across his skin. The burn on his cheek heals as he loosens his hold over his demonic side.

He hisses. “Stand back, angel.”

He glides forward and his body transforms. He drops all elements of humanity and becomes the great and large Serpent of Eden. The Almighty cursed him to always slither on his belly, but since She spoke that into existence, he has more power this way. 

Imani steps back, alarmed as many humans are by snakes. The Serpent is long and wide. Crowley knocks over a side table and a lamp crashes to the floor. He circles in front of Imani in wide, loose coils.

“I’ll kill you,” she warns, and her magic flares out at him. Beelzebub and Gabriel are both screaming so loud that Crowley can hear them in this plane.

Using these extra powers, she tries to exert her will over him again, but Crowley is faster and knocks her back into the wall with one strike. His fangs glisten as he rears back. She’s immobilized by his venom so he shifts back. Aziraphale joins him as they stand together as man-shaped beings. 

“As I was saying,” Aziraphale begins, before he leans the tire iron against his leg and dusts off his hands, “redemption is very powerful. Should you repent of these actions, you may avoid life in Hellfire. Otherwise, I’m afraid your eternity will not be pleasant. It’s very _damp_ down there, you see.”

Crowley looks at him incredulously. “Of all the things you could say about Hell, you complain about the humidity?”

“Well, it was dark and crowded as well, but mostly, yes, it was the damp that bothered me the most,” Aziraphale admits, a bit carpingly. 

Crowley continues to study him, mouth agape and face contorted. “You didn’t say that in Wessex when we were banging around in those tin cans.”

Aziraphale fidgets primly. Crowley rolls his shoulders and the remaining scales disappear.

“So let’s recap, somehow you kidnapped an angel and demon, then opened the ether,” Crowley points at her, “and I’m still curious about that one. Oh, and how you took the error-laden blueprints and notes you found there and used them to create rituals. Really curious about that one, honestly.”

Aziraphale pulls Elizabeth from her sling and cradles her in his arms. “I’m also curious why you stored all this power in the fledgling. You must have discovered early on that hurting her would hurt you. How did you complete the rituals then?”

Imani’s eyes flash blue, but Beelzebub is too weak to fight against Crowley’s venom. No words form. Aziraphale must see this as some sort of answer, however.

“You made a deal with a devil?” Aziraphale scolds. “My girl, you should know better!”

Crowley grins, “Who was it? It was Hastur, wasn’t it? He loves deals.” 

Imani’s face blanches and Crowley knows he’s right. “Was it the frog on his head? Is that what sold you on the deal? What did he make you trade? Your soul?”

Beelzebub tries to take control again, judging by the flare of blue in those black-limitless eyes. Beside him, Aziraphale begins to faintly glow.

“You burned him,” Aziraphale says, almost awed. “She burned him like a candle. He’s _gone_. His magic was used to open the ether.”

Crowley rocks back on his heels. “He’s a Duke of Hell. That’s a lot of power.”

“It wasn’t enough,” Aziraphale states and immediately steps forward and shoved Elizabeth into the demon’s arms. 

“I am Aziraphale, Principality of the Lord, albeit lately retired. I can help you break the agreement with Hell,” he offers. “Would you be open to such a thing?”

“You can’t,” Imani argues, slurring against the venom. “I’ve more power in me than a little principality.”

Aziraphale hums, “Perhaps so. But you needed a builder to pull the angel fledgling from the firmament for you—so you summoned a Prince of Hell. Only, they didn’t have Her spark of grace any longer. You needed an angel.”

“How did you alone summon someone as powerful as an Archangel?” Crowley asks. Summoning isn’t fun for those pulled into service. Beyond that, it’s powerful magic—not something one person can do.

She rolls her eyes, “My coven did. We tried six times, but it wasn’t ever right.”

“Yes, well, seven is an important number to Heaven,” the angel remarks. 

“I should have poured holy water on Hastur when I had the chance,” Crowley grumbles. 

“The Archangel spoke to Her—the Almighty,” Imani admits. Her eyes are wide and terrified, even without an iris, it’s apparent. “She came to him in a dream. She said I was not to the natural order of things. She told him that he was only a messenger and not to be involved as he was—She offered to let him Fall so he could avoid my torment. He refused. She was pleased.”

Crowley hums but Aziraphale makes a sound like a sob. 

“She struggles with things that are out of the order of things. Mind, my Mother made the order then refused to check in with anyone, so there’s no telling what She’s thinking these days. And She does like to test things, sorry about that Featherfuck,” he says to Gabriel.

“She talked about you, _Gadreel_ ,” Imani says loudly, her voice nearly back to normal. At the same time, Crowley hits his knees with a howl of pain. 

“She talked about how you were the reason so many of the builders fell. How your quest for logic damned you and all the rest.”

Aziraphale reaches for him, but it cannot stop the train force of power that burns at the edges of his being when Imani speaks his true name again.

“ _Gadreel_ . Your name is now a curse. It worked on _Baal_ too,” Imani says and through the shower of his own pain, Crowley feels Beelzebub contort in agony at their first name. 

“Enough,” Aziraphale declares and his voice rocks the foundation of the house. He’s loosed his wings—all of them—along with his true self. Heads and eyes and motor belts all twist around before them. His mortal corporeal form is there, but under and behind his true self. Crowley has no words to describe what’s happening. Aziraphale is somehow on three plains at once. 

His many eyes track along Imani’s shape and follow something unseen toward Elizabeth. The griffin snaps its beak.

“You’re storing power in her,” Aziraphale notes, “but she’s drawing power too—straight from your soul. You made her without a core and she wants one.”

He looks back at Imani and nods to something said in the other plain. “Indeed, that was smart, Lord Beelzebub.”

Imani rages. “Do not speak to them. They are mine.”

Aziraphale’s tortoise head stretches out on a long, green neck. It blinks its many eyes at the line that it must see between Imani and Elizabeth. 

“To sever it will cause too much feedback,” he says, clearly answering either Gabriel or Beelzebub. “It’ll kill all of us, but it might also do something more on the cosmic level. That’s a lot of power.”

His wolf head swivels to look at Crowley. “Are you able to stand, my darling? Prince Beelzebub believes that you can build with the power.”

Crowley tucks Elizabeth against his chest and considers if his legs will hold him. They feel like water.

“Can’t. No grace at my core.” But that’s not exactly limiting, apparently. He considers how Beelzebub was able to work with Gabriel’s power—or was it all Imani’s control? Would it matter? They were working at one being. The answer clicks together suddenly.

“Angel,” he calls, his voice gravelly, “I need your help.”

Aziraphale grabs him by the elbows, apparently thinking he needs help to stand. Crowley doesn’t deny that it’s rather true. 

“We’re going to pull the power out of Elizabeth and drop it into the cosmos—“

“I’m no builder—“

“Nope, you’re the Principality Aziraphale, exactly who I need to help me.” Crowley reaches out his hand and takes Aziraphale’s. He tucks his arm around them both, holding Elizabeth between them. He snaps his night-dark wings onto the physical plane and wraps them around all of Aziraphale’s multiple layers and himself. Elizabeth gives a small whimper.

“Angel, we have to do this together. I can’t do it without you.”

Aziraphale’s human physical brow wrinkles and his wolf nose scrunches. “We can’t fuse. We’ll just switch forms—“

“Nah, we’re already one. Two shall become one flesh, and all.”

“I am not having colitis in front of an audience—“

Crowley barks out a laugh and pulls his sunglasses off to hook them on his shirt. “Noted, but not where I was going with that. We’ve been married for like six thousand years. If we’re not one yet, ’s never gonna happen. Now, help me.”

Aziraphale’s eyes burn into his and Crowley lets his imagination and his true self loose. Aziraphale gasps and Crowley grins. 

“We’re going to make a star,” he says into the void of nothing-but-everything. They face the firmament, tasting all the things that could be and are and will be. Time flows around them and Aziraphale’s faces turn in all directions taking in the beauty of infinity. Elizabeth sighs between them and Aziraphale’s many wings wrap around them in a new layer. Then Crowley catches Aziraphale’s eye and they begin.

Indeed, they move as one. They reach into the deepest layer of Elizabeth’s form and pull the power free. Crowley laughs, delighted. This is nothing like making aluminum. This is magic!

He spins the light around his hands, feeling the fire from his wheels and the burn of Aziraphale’s core twisting it and plaiting it into something new. Deep within the firmament, Beelzebub speaks, counting off electrons and suggesting tweaks. Gabriel offers other suggestions, but they’re not remotely helpful. Aziraphale just watches, delighted, and moves his fingers to mirror Crowley’s. Imani floats there, out of their reach, but irrevocably tied to Elizabeth. The line of power, blue as Imani’s soul, binds them together. 

Aziraphale sees it and wraps the line around his fingers and tugs. It yanks free of Imani and her black eyes dilate. The blue light surges toward the infant and Aziraphale presses it into the area where her tiny heartbeats at the same time that Crowley pulls the rest of the powerful light free of her frame. 

Beelzebub is there then, dragging Gabriel after them, to stand at Crowley’s side. Gabriel claps his hands over Beelzebub’s. Together, the four of them turn the light over and over again. It flares and forms into something new. Elizabeth hiccups.

It spins and blooms, then bursts free of them and launches into the sky. The firmament echos with delight and they all suddenly stand in the parlor of Summergrove Hall’s parlor once more. Their layers are pushed back into their physical beings like gravity pressing down on them. 

Imani’s body lays crumbled against the wall, void of anything. It’s just a husk. Nothing but a shell.

Crowley’s knees give out and he’s glad that Aziraphale has a better hold on Elizabeth. The angel grabs him about the waist and pulls them together, the three as one small unit. Gabriel stands off to the side, looking more rumpled than Crowley has ever seen him. He tugs on his lapels as a cover for looking at Beelzebub shyly.

Beelzebub stretches their long hands over their head and cracks their neck.

“I never thought I’d miss having toes,” they buzz, looking down at their boots. “But I missed my blessed toes.”

Aziraphale stretches in a different way and checks each layer of himself. “She didn’t touch my power. How about you?”

Crowley does a similar internal check and finds himself whole. Gabriel, on the other hand, gives a lurching cry. Beelzebub groans.

“This is ridiculous!” they shout. “Unacceptable! Haven’t I lost enough already?”

“What am I if I’m not an Archangel?” Gabriel cries. He looks completely destroyed, but then grabs Beelzebub into his chest and rocks them. His meaty arms surround them. The Prince starts to fight back, then they suddenly go limp and cling. 

Crowley stares at all this and offers a thoughtful, “huh.” Aziraphale drags him away. 

“We need to find the first grimoire,” he says. “And they need a moment alone together.”

“’S just weird,” Crowley notes as the angel drags him away. Even as he’s guided out, he keeps looking behind him at the other two. He finally looks away when Beelzebub stretches up to kiss Gabriel. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive my delay. School is a beast right now, plus the usual stress of teaching + COVID-19 + family conferences + kitchen reno... I may have had several weeks of eating peanut butter M&Ms at my desk for lunch and crying. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this.

Planting ideas into a mortal’s mind does not take much effort. Aziraphale and Crowley have practiced hundreds of times over the years of their Arrangement. The mechanics are the same: blessing or temptation. They find the plane where the human conscious floats like water surface tension in a droplet and they press against its boundaries. Like water cohesion, the idea slides in and binds like hydrogen and oxygen atoms do. Then the human processes it—unwraps it and savors it like a sweet. Then their brain flushes with dopamine if they take the bait. 

Crowley has always insisted that temptations are just a gentle pressure toward something that these people already want to do. However, to Aziraphale, it felt more like angling. The temptation or blessing was the worm on the hook in a cosmic game of fishing. 

The side effects of whatever just happened between two demons, two angels, a semi-ethereal fledgling, and a power-hungry mortal feel very similar. He sniffs the air and gets a whiff of those human brain chemicals in the next plane. Perhaps this magic was a happy chemical releaser, but that is not something he has associated with rituals before. Fear, certainly. Power, heavens yes. Connection, sometimes—the honor of the earth or sky, even less so. The angel smacks his lips to rid his mouth of the taste and begins his search for the additional grimoire Imani and her cult used.

Summergrove Hall is a traditional manor house and Aziraphale knows his ways around these. He zeros in on his target: the library.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Crowley reminds as he takes the fledgling. “You probably already have all those books anyway. We’ll search the bedrooms.”

Aziraphale waves him off. “I can contain myself, I assure you.”

“That would be a first,” Crowley mutters under his breath, but the angel chooses to ignore the comment. 

The allure of books is actually fairly tempting after all the excitement and stress. He sniffs the air again but does not find any traces of dopamine now—only moldering paper. That’s the first clue that the library is a mess. The tombs have been left to deal with the elements for years. If the yellowing spot of water damage on the ceiling is any indication then the books could be beyond saving. He glances at the shelves, expecting to need to hunt. Instead, he finds the grimoire immediately. It sits on a long walnut table surrounded by blueprints that appear to be from before creation. One snap and all these, the grimoire, and any other book in the house relocate to his bookshop.

“Almost too easy,” he admits, feeling an inkling of worry. The danger has passed already, he’s sure. His worry blooms quickly then fades away. Even still, he hurries to find his family.

They’re in the ladies' solar. The fledgling lays on the sofa’s ottoman and Crowley sits on the chair directly in front of her. His legs are spread and his elbows rest on his knees. He lets his hands fall loose and hang in the space between his legs. His sunglasses flash in the sunlight. He’s in some sort of juvenile staring contest with the baby. Aziraphale opens his mouth to announce his success, but Crowley speaks first.

“Innit a shame that went tits up? For you, I mean,” he offers and the fledgling glares back sullenly. “I’m rather chuffed for me and mine, obviously.”

The infant offers nothing in reply. Crowley gives a dramatic sigh before ripping his sunglasses off and tucking them into the collar of his vest.

“The way I see if you have two options. One, stay Imani and we’ll raise you as some sort of child prodigy. You can graduate high school at seven and finish your doctorate at twelve. Something like that. Take piano lessons and master it—then play for the Queen or whatever. Become a pool shark, I don’t give a fuck. We’ll treat you like the adult you are. I’ll tell ya, if you choose that option, ’s a bitch to try and do what you want when your body doesn’t have the muscle memory yet. Try to talk. Go on.”

The fledgling gurgles but only makes indiscriminate sounds. 

“Your muscles haven’t quite gotten with the program yet. Larynx, tongue, the whole lot. I’ll just assume you’re telling me to fuck off.”

The baby would be cooing if it didn’t sound so threatening. Crowley ignores her.

“Option two, I wipe your memory. You’ll be Elizabeth, not Imani. Piano or snooker, we’ll still support you one hundred percent. You’re our kid no matter what. This way though, you’d get a fresh start with parents who adore you.”

The baby is silent but still glaring. Crowley’s fingers twitch, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. His yellow eyes are piercing and steady. 

“There’s a third option. I’m not going to suggest that one. It’d hurt the angel too much. It’s not off the table, mind you.” His irises contract into sharp lines. “I do not approve of killing kids. You’re no kid though.”

The baby gurgles again and Crowley cocks his head at her. Based on the quark of his lips, he decides whatever she’s saying isn’t worth replying to. He carries on.

“Either way, you need to know a few things. First, I’ve raised a lot of children. I have great-grandkids older than your grandparents. Hell, you might already be related to me through one of the children I brought up. The point is, I learned to leave before they could hate me. I’m not planning to leave you though because Aziraphale hasn’t learned that lesson. He’ll want to stay.

“We’re not mortal; we will never age. We will never wilt. You will hate us in the end—trust me on this one. I mean, you hate us right now too, but differently. You need to be ready for that. Aziraphale will not understand it, but I will. So if you need us to step away, you’re going to have to tell me.”

Crowley looks down at his palms for a moment before rolling his shoulders and returning to his line of conversation. 

“Second, you will not so much as dabble in magic. I know you think you’re all slick and powerful, but you haven’t seen what we can do, not really. I can taste magic in your soul and your aura. If I do, I will send you straight to the chambers of Hell.”

The infant appears to roll her eyes, then Crowley leans in. The air around him refracts and shimmers with heat. Fire breaks out across the lines of Crowley’s hands and he holds them out over the fledgling. Her eyes widen suddenly and she wriggles but is unable to escape her swaddling. Aziraphale steps forward and inhales, ready to break in, but the demon speaks. His voice is low and dangerous.

“Third, and most importantly, if you so much as think harm on Aziraphale, I will reduce you to dust. You will not get forgiveness or a second chance.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale interrupts. Crowley does not start, so he must have known he was there. The fire extinguishes and the wall of heat that emanates from him disappears.

“You disagree with my punishments?” Crowley asks, aiming for levity. 

The angel hums and strides into the room, watching the fledgling all the time. 

“Not as such. I must warn you, little one, that I am a guardian. If you’re one of mine, no one shall ever harm you. However,” at this he stands behind Crowley and sets his hands heavily on the demon’s warm shoulders, “he is mine in every way that matters. He is generous and will kill you painlessly. If you hurt Crowley, I will burn you in Hellfire.”

The baby blinks slowly and Aziraphale gets the idea that she’s finally realizing that she has no power anymore. She has been outplayed. 

“You brought low two demons and an Archangel,” Aziraphale continues, slowly, “you had great potential. However, you burned through it. By all rites, I should smite you now, even in this form.”

The fledgling whines. 

“But I believe that, in Elizabeth’s form, you are now an angel and deserve grace. Which will you choose?” 

Aziraphale’s fingers grip Crowley’s shoulders tightly. He should be more mindful of his strength because the demon winces. The grip loosened, Crowley leans forward and draws his fingers through the air above the fledgling’s head. 

“She wants option one,” Crowley translates, after touching her mind. He does not seem disappointed, but the angel is.

“Oh, lovely!” Aziraphale exclaims to hide his dismay. It must not work well for Imani’s baby brow wrinkles. “Anything you’d like us to avoid in your upbringing? Allergies we should know about? Perhaps you hate sprouts?—“

“Don’t be daft, angel, everyone hates sprouts.”

“We could remove our… um… coitus from her memory,” Aziraphale offers and feels the blush stain his cheeks.

“Just call it ‘rogering’ if you’re going to be so fuckin’ posh about it,” Crowley replies while resettling his sunglasses on his nose. He lifts Imani into his arms and ignores her blatant anger.

“I’ve sent all the documents on ahead of us,” Aziraphale reveals and notes the look of keen interest that shines in Imani’s eyes. 

“I’ll take them to Heaven immediately,” Gabriel declares from the doorway. He looks thoroughly ruffled—the kind that can only come from a good snog. 

“Ugh, no you won’t,” Beelzebub argues from behind him. They’re dramatically shorter and nearly hidden behind the angel’s large size. “They’re going to Hell.”

Crowley doesn’t seem surprised at this but is instead focused on Imani. “Divide them up. Half and half,” he clucks, still watching the fledgling. “The grimoires have to go too.”

Imani stares, unblinking. It is not a friendly expression, even on the body of a three-month-old. 

“To the bookshop then,” Crowley declares at a hiss. He leads them down the grand stairs and out of Summergrove Hall to the Bentley. 

Beelzebub and Gabriel bicker the entire way.

“Heaven had these the first time, in case you forgot—“

“Incorrect. The enchantress—“

“Enchantress? Seriously, this isn’t some blessed fairy tale—“

“—pulled them from the ether. A negative space. Heaven will see them safety stowed—“

“Nah, the ether isn’t ‘negative’, it’s a neutral space—“

“—but clearly covered by Hell’s dominion. If you, the damned, could not keep up with these then it’s no surprise—“

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

The prince might be smaller than the Archangel, but they round on him and meet toe-to-toe. Heat rolls in the air around Beelzebub and Gabriel faintly glows. Aziraphale dithers and fidgets. He might need to intervene. Then he hears Crowley clear his throat to garner his attention as the demon buckles the fledgling into the car seat.

“Angel,” he says, “a moment.” 

Aziraphale wraps his arm around his partner’s waist and pulls him away from the car. “Yes, my dear?”

“Your antique collection of prophecy books and other texts, would any of them happen to have a touch of magic in them?” Crowley asks, suspiciously. He is not remotely taken-in by Imani’s decision it seems.

“She cannot even hold up her own head. How will she get a book off the shelf?” Aziraphale asks incredulously. 

Crowley lets his sunglasses slip down his nose and he stares at Aziraphale with his characteristic lack of blinking. 

“She’s powerful, and now we’ve stuffed her into an ethereal form. She might even have access to divine power. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he hastens to say when Aziraphale’s eyes widen. “I don’t want to give her a chance to access mortal magic either.”

Aziraphale nods slowly, his mind turning the problem over and over. Gabriel, however, seems to have another problem. Their bickering had ended, but the archangel is petulant.

“I am not riding in that physical matter deathtrap. It is base elements held together by additional melted elements and then powered with electricity. How these humans survive—“

“—Whatever, Fuckfeathers,” Beelzebub drones as they slip into the passenger seat. “We’ll meet you at the shop then. C’mon you pansy snake, I wanna see if this thing can break the sound barrier.”

“Fuckfeathers?” Aziraphale askes, horrified.

"'Sgood, right?" Crowley asks devilishly delighted.

Gabriel rolls his eyes and disappears with a pop.

“You think he read _Harry Potter_?” Beelzebub asks as they settle into the front of the car. “Just popping in and out like that, seems a bit like copyright infringement.”

“That bint would deserve it,” Crowley snarls and helps Aziraphale into the backseat behind the driver’s side.

“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale chastises, “that’s hypocritical. You of all people hate misogynistic insults.”

Crowley’s lips pull into a slant and his nose twitches. He pushes the driver’s seat back into place. 

“Fine, but that transphobic bitch blew up her career because she can’t see past her hate.”

Beelzebub stares at Crowley, then says with awed horror, “You really are the worst fucking demon ever.”

Aziraphale clucks his tongue appreciatively. 

Crowley slides behind the wheel and grins. “I’m retired.”

* * *

Two weeks pass in some sort of domestic bliss—or what would pass as it if they lived in _the Twilight Zone_. Beelzebub and Gabriel, for all their shouting and bickering, are exhausted. Whatever Imani did to them drained them magically and physically. Gabriel’s miracle transportation hadn’t helped him either. He looks gaunt, while Beelzebub’s eyes remained ringed in bruise-like dark circles. They spend the first eight or so days sleeping or fighting sleep on various sofas. 

“I don’t understand!” Gabriel complains as he yawns. “My corporation has never responded this way.”

Beelzebub stretches sleepily on the chaise before rolling over to put their back to the shop door. “Clearly, you’ve never had sex then, Fuckfeathers. A good fucking rings you out—“

Gabriel sputters until Crowley hastily drags Aziraphale and Imani out for dinner. They return hours later to find the archangel sleeping out of sight in one of the bedrooms. Beelzebub is reading _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ in a significantly satisfied manner on the sofa.

Crowley looks at Aziraphale knowingly. Aziraphale returns his look with an affronted air, but, privately, he’s glad that Crowley miracled a new guest flat onto the ground floor of the cafe. It’s functional but tiny. A short hallway branches into a pair of bedrooms and a small loo. Cooking takes place in the backroom (or up in Crowley’s and his flat) and they socialize in the shop. Apparently, they _fraternize_ in the bedroom, which is an unexpected but appreciated gift.

Their recuperation allows time for the four of them to scour through the pre-creation documents. Initially, they hunt for any clue to Imani’s abilities to change erroneous plans into magic. None located, they sort the papers carefully. Eventually, they agree on a system: anything that deals with forms and foundations of Heaven belongs there, as do angel-like habits (like nesting), or blueprints that do closely with the Earth. Hell takes the math heavier ones, which seems strange to Aziraphale. After all, the builders are the only ones who can understand these, perhaps they should not get those notes back. Crowley shrugs this away. 

“Full of bad sums and thrown away ideas, angel. They’re just going into a sulfur pit anyhow.”

Beelzebub nods. “They need to be destroyed. Mortals could control any of us with these.” 

Gabriel seems less decided on destruction and feels that Heaven will want to preserve the files. This makes Aziraphale twitchy, but neither of the demons seems alarmed.

“All the builders fell,” Crowley reminds the angel. “Even if they hoard those documents, they couldn’t do anything with them.”

And so, on the eleventh day, Crowley drove both of them to the official entrances of Hell and Heaven with their half of the blueprints. 

“It was the weirdest thing,” the demon recounts later, draped across the sofa, “Gabriel says to Beelzebub ‘I go running in Hyde Park every day at a quarter to eleven in the morning.’ Then the Prince gives this little bow and got out of the car.”

Aziraphale returns Crowley’s confusion with a chuckle. Then he leans forward from his armchair and presses a quick kiss to the demon’s chin. 

“Not everyone gets the time we did, my darling.” A shadow flits across Aziraphale’s memory and he frowns.

Crowley watches him and reaches out his long fingered-hand. “Angel?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, my love,” Aziraphale says, aiming for a light tone, “I was just considering that we may have paved the way for them.”

Crowley sets down his wine glass and grabs Aziraphale’s knee cap instead. “No, you were beating yourself up again. I thought we decided that self-recrimination was unwelcome on our side.” He squeezes Aziraphale’s knee and the angel blinks back tears.

“Quite so.”

Imani gurgles and they look in her direction. Aziraphale is very proud of his new book holder. It sits close enough to Imani for her to read. (Although her inability to focus lead to him acquiring large print text editions of several recent “beach reads”.) It holds the book open, but still requires one of them to turn the pages occasionally. Crowley had something similar rigged up with an iPad and Netflix. Imani was working her way through some Nazi-hunting show that used too many chess metaphors for Aziraphale’s enjoyment. 

Aziraphale sets down his snifter and turns the page for his daughter. “There you are,” he delights. “I do hope this one isn’t too sad. Anything about those ‘Bright Young Things’ in the twenties tends to be so melancholy. von Reinhold seemed more cheerful. It wasn’t a terrible time; Nonny enjoyed it.”

Crowley sips his wine and leans around the book to meet Imani’s eye. “I was just glad to be out of the Belgian mud, then out of corsets and into chemise dresses. Ngk, those little black dresses caused so much temptation—work was so easy then. ‘Course, cloche hats looked too much like my Brodie helmet, so I never got into those.”

“He did have a bob,” Aziraphale informs the fledgling, who looks only mildly confused. “And those diabolical shoes—silk court heels and he’d want me to carry him over puddles!”

“You liked it,” Crowley drawls in a roguish flirt.

Aziraphale is secretly relieved. He hasn’t seen his partner relax and tease in days. Outwardly, he plays it off coquettishly, as he always has done. He stands and adds another finger of cognac to his glass. Once the decanter is replaced, he lifts the bottle of wine and tops Crowley’s glass off. The demon inclines his head in thanks.

“I’m going to make some inroads on this,” he decides after taking a sip of brandy. He pointedly looks at the mess that appeared from Summergrove Hall. He grabs a stack of books and sits down at his desk to work.

In truth, Aziraphale is surrounded by mostly-terrible novels that are all in need of extreme repair. Some are worth his time and may fetch him some money with other enthusiasts. Some are paperbacks, which, usually, are the least valuable printed texts. Of course, Summergrove Hall continues to be full of trash and nightmares; apparently, there are books worse than paperbacks.

“Abridged?” Aziraphale shouts, dismayed. “Who abridges a book?”

Crowley snorts a laugh, but it's cut short as the door to the shop opens.

“Is it _Middlemarch_?” Beelzebub buzzes from the shop entrance. “I could understand that one. Or _The Brothers Karamazov._ ” 

They make a disgusted sound then shut the door behind them. They’re riveted by their mobile screen, but see Imani in their peripheral vision and make their way around her, without getting too closer.

“It’s Dickens,” Aziraphale informs and stares at the leather-bound book as if it has personally affronted him (it had). 

_Bleak House_ might be a drawn-out satire, but he’d enjoyed the social commentary about the court system when it was published. He considers keeping the book, just to reread it and find what had been redacted. 

“The one with the orphan?” Beelzebub asks, honestly interested. 

Crowley frowns. “Don’t they _all_ have orphans?”

“I believe it was a motif of his genre,” Aziraphale finally replies, before draining his snifter and standing. “I didn’t know you read, Lord Beelzebub.”

The prince buzzes and examines the label on Crowley’s wine bottle. “Not much literature to enjoy in Hell unless this idiot brought me something.”

Aziraphale hums questioningly as he takes the book and the rest of the leather-bound series of abridged novels to the front of the shop. These he can part with, he decides, and miracles them into some sort of sellable quality. 

“You’re fond of novels from the 1870s then?” he asks. 

“No, absolutely _detest_ them,” Beelzebub drones with a glare directed at Crowley. 

“What can I say?” Crowley replies with a shrug. “I brought you what was popular.”

Beelzebub’s buzzing increases in volume and the angel hurries back to be some sort of shield between the two. However, Imani catches his eye as he moves.

She still sits in an infant bouncing seat on top of a table near Crowley. Unlike other infants, she’s awake and cross, and, unlike earlier, her focus is not on the literature hanging above her head. She is straining her eyes to read the spines on the books on Aziraphale’s desk. Instantly, he’s concerned. He sits at his desk quickly, blocking her view.

“My dear,” the angel interrupts and he nods toward the infant. Crowley looks down, but Imani immediately closes her eyes, feigning sleep. The demon does not take the bait and continues to monitor her. 

Suspended on either side of her book hang two rattles with labels “yes” and “no”. Proof that Crowley is treating her like some sort of science experiment. 

Imani is very much a thirty-something woman in a three-month-old’s body. With that in mind, Crowley implemented a communication board—a plastic placemat-like sheet with images, words, and letters. Unfortunately, and to Imani’s extreme frustration, her ability to accurately reach for the image or word she aimed for was very limited. It only took hitting the incorrect image to spurn her temper. Crowley seems convinced that she will work up to it. In the meantime, Imani communicates through “yes” and “no” only. 

At this moment, however, she is trying to hide her age. Crowley seems to decide something and he snaps. Aziraphale raises an eyebrow when he sees the demon has changed attire from loungewear to his usual ensemble, complete with his knotted blue scarf. 

“You’re all dressed up. Off for more human lessons?” Aziraphale asks, glancing in Beelzebub’s direction.

Crowley rubs his throat with his palm and turns from the infant. “Something like that.” 

Beelzebub snorts, “He’s taking his old boss to lunch. C’mon, you snake-arsed-prat. Let’s go.”

Crowley groans. Aziraphale reaches up and Crowley takes his hand, then hauls him to his feet. Once up, the demon leans over and presses his forehead to Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“I feel responsible for them too,” the angel admits. 

“I have been on Earth before. I can figure this out, if you need me to go,” Beelzebub says, suddenly closer. They roll up to their toes and then back down to their heels. They look more human than ever before—gone are the fly hat, cravat, and decorative ribbons. They’re in high-topped trainers, leggings, a peasant blouse, and waistcoat. Their hair is plaited into milkmaid braids and pinned in place. 

“Nah,” Crowley drawls before he stands at his full height and shoves his hands into his trouser pockets. “We need a free childminder, so I gotta stay in your bad graces.”

Beelzebub mimes stabbing the other demon. Crowley flips them the vee and sticks out his tongue.

“Did you visit downstairs then?” Aziraphale asks, politely, while ignoring all this.

The mood instantly changes. The prince nods and examines their cuticles. 

“Nothing to be done,” they buzz. “The Boss was unable to restore my powers, so he allowed me to return topside. He said that if you make me into a traitor too, he’d come to visit and we’d be ‘fucking sorry’. His words.” 

“So he’s raging,” he surmises. Crowley slouches against the table, curling in on himself. There is a tendril of fear in his shoulders as he rolls them inward. 

Beelzebub doesn’t look much better. They inhale a deep breath, balloon out their cheeks, and blow this out. “Oh yeah.” 

“You’re formally retired then,” the angel declares and pushes back this emotion. He grabs Crowley about the waist and tugs him against himself. 

“I believe you mentioned lunch? A little Mediterranean cafe just opened close to the Tube station—word has it that they serve authentic grilled octopus!”

With a snap, Imani and he are ready. Crowley grabs the nappy bag and sticks the fledgling into the pram. If she wanted her novel, then the option is off the table because the demon does not grab it. 

“Well, can’t keep you waiting. The last time you had ‘authentic Greek octopus’ was probably 1970,” Crowley admits.

“I am sure I had some in Athens at the Olympics,” Aziraphale argues as he holds the shop door open for Crowley to wiggle the pram through. 

Beelzebub follows behind with a bemused air about them. The three adult-sized beings stroll along the sidewalks, watching the world stream by. Imani glares at them each in turn from her place in the pram.

“Were you demoted?” Crowley finally asks. 

“He had to. I ain’t got the right powers anymore. He said it was a blessed shame that I let a mortal catch me off guard—“

“I would have liked to see him try to do better in the circumstance,” Aziraphale interjects, sourly. 

Imani gives what might be the angriest cry any infant has ever voiced. It’s not a full scream and it peters out quickly, but all three immortals look down at her. She glares up at them with dark, irate eyes.

“Mind your tongue,” Aziraphale scolds with a sharp tone at the fledgling. 

She shakes her fist at him and punches the “no” rattle. Aziraphale pushes Crowley away from the helm of the pram and leans down into the carriage so that he is closer to Imani’s face. Pedestrians slide past them, miraculously ignorant to the angel-made blockade in the center of the pavement.

“I believe you misunderstand the power in this relationship, young lady,” he castigates. “You will speak politely.” 

Imani closes her eyes in another fake nap. Aziraphale stands to his full height again and they continue to walk down the pavement. Beelzebub looks blindly about them, tracing cars and bicycles as they zip by. 

“He’ll give your job back when your powers resettle. Did he show his… _displeasure_ any other way?” Crowley bumps their shoulder with his own. “Need anything healed?”

This gives Aziraphale pause. The way Crowley calmly asked if they’ve been tortured as if it were a usual occurrence makes the angel’s stomach turn. How often had Crowley sat on his sofa while he complained about books or customers, but might have been injured? Guilt washes over him.

“Nah, jus’ let it heal,” they buzz but Crowley looks at them over his sunglasses.

“No sulfur baths around here or Hellfire showers. Open wounds don’t heal the same… if you want a hand, lemme know,” Crowley finally says. 

“Stop fussing,” Beelzebub replies, but the letters drone and vibrate.

Crowley shrugs. Aziraphale changes the subject, even as guilt burns like acid reflex.

“Now, have you tried Greek food yet?”

The prince-that-was has not had Greek food in several centuries, it seems. They enjoy their gyro and sample the angel’s dolma and the demon’s ouzo.

“That’s got punch,” they admit after drinking a glass over ice.

“You can mix it with water,” Crowley admits with a shrug. “But what’s the point then?”

There are little bites of white cheese and grilled octopus. The demons nibble at these and Aziraphale groans over every bite.

“Just Ambrosian,” he declares as he pats his mouth with this napkin. 

Imani stares at them from under the hood of her pram. She gives a chirp. The three look at her. No one wonders aloud, but they all have the same questions. Will she always harbor a love for power and willingness for destruction and pain—even with a new start? Did they even transfer her a soul when they stuffed the woman’s core into the fledgling? They’re not the Almighty. 

Crowley pulls a bottle from her nappy bag and offers it to her. She punches the “no” rattle, then glares at the plates on the table.

“You won’t like this, fledgling mine. It’s not sweet.” 

Imani punches the “yes” rattle and glares in a way that suggests she means “now, damnit” instead. 

Crowley chuckles darkly and runs his pinkie finger through some of Aziraphale’s tzatziki sauce.

“Just telling you now, I did warn you,” he says then slides his finger into Imani’s mouth. She smacks her lips and makes an angry face before screaming.

“You have a bunch of tastebuds, but they’re infant tastebuds, Imani. You can’t just hope for everything the way it was—“

He is cut off by the appearance of a group of four grandmother types. Three coo over Imani.

“Oh, hello, aren’t you precious?” one woman says with an adoring turn of her lips.

“Such lovely eyes,” another replies. Aziraphale leans forward to ensure the miracle that keeps Imani’s wings hidden is working. Satisfied, he reclines again. 

As he does, he notices the fourth woman look from Imani’s dark skin to Crowley’s freckles, then without any desecration look to Beelzebub. Lunch suddenly sits heavily in Aziraphale’s stomach.

“Is it a girl or a boy?” the fourth woman asks with a pinched expression.

Crowley leans back in his seat and slings his arm across the back of Aziraphale’s chair.

“A little girl. Cheeky brat, but that’s due to her Baba here.”

The woman takes in their seating position, then glances down to the pram again at Imani. She is the outlier to three other women who are talking to Imani about what a lovely girl she is and how tiny her little fingers are, or are supplying endless and unrequested suggestions to Crowley about cloth nappies. 

Almost unbidden, the fourth woman snaps, “Where is her mother?” She glances over at Beelzebub, then dismisses them.

Aziraphale’s hands tighten into fists, but Crowley relaxes further, the serpent sunning itself before it strikes. 

“I suppose I am the closest thing she has. We don’t know her bio-mom,” he declares, turning his head so that the sun glints off his sunglasses.

“Adoption is a life-changer,” the first woman says with an open and warm face. “I’ve been a foster carer since I was a young wife. My William’s gone now and my hands don’t work as well as they have—but these knuckles know a thing about fastening those tiny buttons!”

“Those snaps they put on infant clothes now!” the third woman agrees. “I was at John’s helping with Olivia and they were all along the bottoms of everything.” 

The fourth woman is unmoved by any of this and the second woman is watching her. 

“Emily?” she asks the fourth woman, but she ignores this entreaty.

“So you just took a child?” she asks, his voice nasal and sharp. “Just _any_ child they’d give you? Is she from some woman who lives on the dole? She needed bailing out, the hussy, and you just took anyone they’d give you? So desperate for a child that you’d take—“

She suddenly stops speaking and clutches her chest. She sways and her friend grabs her as she loses her balance. Crowley sits rigidly in his chair and then swings to face Beelzebub. The former prince is holding their fist tightly and then releasing it, before squeezing again.

“Stop it,” Crowley hisses, desperately. “She’s already marked for down there. Just stop it.”

Beelzebub glares, “You have gone softer than anyone thought. You’re not just a traitor—“

“—That’s enough,” Aziraphale interrupts and there is Heavenly power in his voice. Beelzebub releases their fist and the woman collapses to the floor in a faint. Behind them, someone tells 999 that a woman is having a heart attack. 

Crowley gives a long, slow exhale and snaps. The check is paid. They make their way out into the late summer sun before the paramedics arrive. Aziraphale lingers in the doorway and directs a miracle to each of the kinder ladies. He considers that Her Grace was made for all humans as he looks at the fourth woman, floundering on the tile. He cannot get over her hatred. She lays gaping without his intervention.

He rejoins the others. He isn’t sure how to categorize what he’s just experienced. Has Beelzebub nearly killed a woman because of her bigotry? Or have they punished someone for their unfortunate turn of situation? 

Crowley offers him a concerned look but Aziraphale shakes his head. Now is not the time for a discussion about fate or their emeritus status concerning miracles, and it will certainly not be held in front of an audience. Beelzebub watches the silent exchange of weighted glances between the pair.

“Any word from Gabriel?” they ask, trying to sound nonchalant.

Crowley pushes Imani’s pram and seems more focused on her than the conversation around them. 

“Not any more than you have, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale admits, still uncertain.

Crowley tries to harness the conversation as he teases, “Aziraphale used to say he’d run in the park some days. I only run when I’m chased by something.”

“Oh yes,” Aziraphale adds helpfully, “like an angry mob. Wasn’t it 331 BC when you and some other ladies were punished for some pandemic?”

Crowley’s shoulders tense. “Yeah, they didn’t survive that punishment.”

Aziraphale cringes, “Ah, yes, forgive me. I remember Livy writing something about that.”

Crowley frowns and leans down to fuss with the hood of the pram so the sun is shielded from Imani’s eyes. Aziraphale slips his arm around Crowley’s elbow and steps closer to him. They walk in silence then, Crowley pushing the pram and Beelzebub stopping periodically to gaze into shop windows.

“I am sorry about the witch hunt comment. I’d forgotten. I think that scene in the cafe has me off-of-sorts. That was horrendous,” he admits. Imani punches the “yes” rattle, her eyes wide in a way the angel has yet to see. “I wish I could protect you from such hatred, little one.”

“We’ll do our best,” Crowley promises, without looking at either of them. He makes a little non-vowel-containing noise that suggests he is participating in an emotional conversation that he would rather avoid. He stares down the pavement, but his jaw clenches. 

“What’s Jakarta like these days?” Beelzebub asks, apropos of nothing in their conversation. They sidle up beside them.

“Depends,” Crowley replies, pursing his lips, “when were you last there?”

They buzz a thoughtful hum, “1750?”

Crowley guffaws, “Oh yeah, it’s nothing like you last saw. Colonization fell apart and they’re independent these days.”

Beelzebub gestures back to the last window they pursued. Print outs of properties line the estate agent’s glass. “Maybe I should get my own place—only you two sort of have London claimed.”

“You thought you’d go farther afield?” Aziraphale surmises and leads them across the street as the traffic light changes. 

“Something like that,” Beelzebub’s lips twist uncertainly, then they tap their bare wrist and suddenly change the subject. “It’s Gabriel’s running time. I’m going to try and catch him. Smell ya later.” 

They cut across the street, dodging around cars and flipping off anyone who dares to honk at them.

“What’s so great about watching someone jog?” Crowley calls after them.

“Tracksuits and angel arses, you idiot snake. Trust me on this one,” they call back.

Crowley’s lips purse thoughtfully and he ducks back around to ogle Aziraphale’s posterior. Aziraphale feels his cheeks flame.

“If you would be so kind,” the angel returns primly. “Eyes up here.” 

Crowley gives a humph. “No fun at all.”

Then after a moment, he continues with a decadent hiss, “I do see their point though."

“Not while there is business to attend to,” Aziraphale declares, feeling his blush lessen. “We need to deal with those grimoires. And whatever else Imani has hidden away in the other books we returned with.”

Crowley’s jaw tightens and Imani’s eyes widen, then settle into a scowl. 

“We’ll shred them today then. Bleach out the ink.” Crowley concludes. “Be done with all of them. Even the abridged ones.”

Aziraphale tightens his hold on Crowley’s elbow as he directs his next comment to Imani, “The world may send you an award for the abridged editions.”

They walk for a moment or two tightly pressed together with the pram. 

“I was thinking we should stop by the park and test out the swings,” Aziraphale abruptly suggests. He was not thinking any such thing, but that woman’s comment has shaken something loose in him. 

Crowley’s eyebrow climbs over his sunglasses, but he angles the pram to cross the street opposite of their original direction. They stroll down the Mall with Buckingham Palace a tiny glimmering speck in the distance. Imani stretches then suddenly yawns. Without releasing Aziraphale’s arm, Crowley leans forward and tucks another blanket around the infant.

“You can rest, fledgling mine,” he informs her. “I know you’re all grown up in that head of yours, but your body is struggling to heal from trauma.” 

“Plus growing up uses extreme energy. Take a kip,” Aziraphale suggests. “We’ll wake you at the playground?”

Imani reaches toward the “yes”, before decides otherwise and closes her eyes. Crowley tucks the blanket around her chin. They walk, easily matching one another’s pace at this well-known leisure stroll. All around them summer dominates. Music plays from open windows of passing cars and people laugh. The air heats with the coming afternoon sun. It also makes Aziraphale drowsy. 

Once Imani is suitable asleep, Crowley turns his head to face Aziraphale. “What’s with the urgent need for swinging?”

Aziraphale squeezes Crowley’s elbow and leans into him again. “I’m very fond of swings.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Crowley replies, before letting his tone turn slightly sarcastic. “I remember how much you just _raved_ about Glenn Miller and your adoration of swing in 1936. ‘Too sentimental’, I believe you said.”

Aziraphale considers aiming his tried-and-true prim and prissy look but instead changes tactics. 

He smiles and sings, 

_“Beside a garden wall, when stars are bright, you are in my arms._

_The nightingale tells his fairytale of paradise, where roses grew._

_Though I dream in vain, in my heart, it will remain._

_My stardust melody, the memory of love's refrain.”_

Crowley says nothing for several steps after Aziraphale stops singing. Then he abruptly stops and kisses him. It makes Aziraphale’s toes curl in his shoes. It’s the first kiss they’ve shared in days. It is tremendous. The juncture of their lips promises nothing short of eternity and the boundlessness of their love for one another. The air around them sizzles with added heat. When they part, they’re both a little starstruck.

Crowley chuckles and slips his arm from Aziraphale’s to around his waist instead. “That song was from the ‘20s.”

Aziraphale starts, his hands braced on the pram handle, “The 1820s? Surely not! That nice girl Miss Day sang it!”

“Nah, the 1920s—but what’s a century between old friends?” They continue to walk with their hips brushing each other’s as Crowley holds them together. Aziraphale reaches down with one hand and threads his fingers through Crowley’s where they sit on his hip.

The playground is a few turns along the pavement and full of rambunctious children. They shriek in delight and run about in small groups. Someone throws a piece of bark and another strikes at it with a stick. Another trio of smaller children tries to climb up a slide backward. They continuously bump into each other and slip back down to the bottom. Crowley maintains the course and takes them directly to the swing set.

He reaches in and lifts out Imani, safety swaddled so her wings are not on display. “Go on, angel, pick out your swing.” 

All the seats are mysteriously empty, where there had been a queue of impatient children before. Aziraphale cannot find it in himself to complain. He selects a swing and hesitantly settles into it. Once seated, Crowley hands the infant to him. 

Aziraphale cradles her to his chest and she blinks up at him sleepily. For a moment, he wants to apologize. This is a grown woman. Then again, he decides to listen to that small internal voice that has long directed his actions. He pretends, just for the moment, that she only is his tiny, three-month-old daughter and nothing more.

“Are you ready, little one? We’re going to go up high into the sky!” he singsongs and pushes off the ground. It’s not a very dramatic swing. While he is a divine being, he still worries that he might drop her. He looks up to see Crowley holding his mobile out, clearly filming this moment. Behind his extended arm and mobile, his mouth curves into a sweet smile. 

Imani’s eyes struggle to focus on the constant movement, so Aziraphale turns her in his arms so she can stare up at his face. 

“Isn’t this lovely? When you’re bigger, I’ll push you on this swing. Then you’ll get to be too big for Baba to need to push you,” he chuckles and pushes off the ground again. “Then we’ll teach you to fly. Nonny won’t tell you this, but he loves to fly at night. He thinks it makes him mysterious—“

“Oi!” Crowley shouts.

“Ask him sometime about training to be _shinobi_ during the collapse of the feudal system in Japan. He was terrible at it. He kept tripping over his own feet and then had to miracle the memory of his stumbling away—“

“Angel!” Crowley whined. 

“—and when he did so the miracle that keeps him looking less ginger and more Japanese would fail. He’d had to wipe everyone’s memory and then usually just went serpent to sneak away.”

“Slander! Absolute slander. C’mon, you two, I want an ice lolly,” Crowley grumbles before reclaiming the pram handles and shoving away toward the ice cream cart.

Aziraphale drags his feet and slows them to a stop. “Wasn’t that fun?” He bends forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. He ignores the confused blink Imani directs toward him. It takes a minor miracle to extract himself from the swing’s seat and wander toward Crowley.

“Want a 99 Flake, angel?” the demon asks without waiting for an answer. He’s already ordered it. 

Aziraphale settles Imani into the pram again and wraps the second blanket around her torso. She gives another confused, but contented sigh then blinks slowly. Without a question, the angel roots around in the nappy bag for a bottle of formula. It would never dream of spilling in the bag, nor would it curdle or be ruined. It’s safe and the perfect temperature for his little girl. 

He offers her the bottle as Crowley extends the ice cream to him. They amble toward an empty park bench, which is not their usual duck-feeding-bench, but a pleasant stand-in on this occasion. Crowley takes the bottle from Aziraphale in exchange for his ice lolly, then lifts Imani from the pram. He settles her with efficient hands, shifts the bottle under his chin to feed her, and reclaims his ice lolly. The whole thing is strangely coordinated for a person who has, on many occasions, tripped over his own feet.

“Where is your mobile telephone?” Aziraphale suddenly asks, inspired. 

“In my pocket,” Crowley answers, before raising an eyebrow. “Angel, if you want to feel me up, could it wait until I haven’t got the sprog?”

“Absolute nonsense,” Aziraphale grumbles. He expects to find the same mobile in the nappy bag, so there it is. 

Crowley sneers at it, “Traitor.”

The mobile offers nothing useful in reply. Aziraphale stares at it in expectation. The mobile is used to Crowley’s more apt technology use and needs a few moments to get on board with what Aziraphale needs. However, it does eventually open a camera app—or something like it. It looks and works like what Aziraphale remembers his cardboard Brownie did. The mobile even helpfully grows a shutter button off one side. Aziraphale shifts the screen and snaps several photos of Crowley in his pretzel-like position.

“Baba is not hip,” Crowley finally declares, with a lick of lemon lolly. “He will embarrass you throughout all of your school years. Mind, I probably will too, but just because I’ll be so much cooler than you. You’ll want me to go away and stop stepping in your spotlight,” he teases. 

The skin around his eyes softens. Crowley shifts and clutches the stick of his snack and the plastic of her bottle in one hand. Thus rearranged, he looks down at her. She stares up at him with a glimmer of trust, but this look is quickly hidden.

“I know it will be a challenge to get used to, but you made this choice. Let’s make it a good one. Let us take care of you and love you like parents, Imani.”

She looks away but does not release the nipple.

Crowley grunts in a way that suggests his unsatisfied with how the conversation went. Aziraphale finishes his ice cream and reaches for the infant and her bottle.

“Shall we see if we can’t avoid a tummy ache later?” He teases and slots her tiny body over his shoulder. He rubs and pats her back while Crowley finishes his snack. 

He’s about to offer Imani the rest of her bottle when Crowley sits up straight. Aziraphale senses the danger and reacts a moment later. The hair on his neck raises and he wishes for his sword. 

“Crowley,” he declares and holds out his arm. The demon’s eyes cast about, looking for the danger, but he does not hesitate to take Aziraphale’s hand. Instantly, they’re transported into the bookshop. 

The pram, nappy bag, and nearly empty bottle appear moments later. Then Crowley glares at the walls and the wards tighten. He snaps his hand in the direction of the newly created guest quarters and they melt away, leaving what building was last warded around them. The rooms feel darker and heavier like they’ve hidden under a blanket fort as children.

“I need to find Beelzebub,” Crowley declares, starting for the door. Imani cries quickly and loudly.

“My dear, no,” Aziraphale argues, his heart pounding. “I don’t think you could do anything for them now.”

They both know it in their bones. That sensation of pain and wrongness hit Crowley first, which suggests it was occult pain they felt. 

“If it were _you_ ,” Crowley begins, his voice hoarse. “If it were our daughter.”

“It’s not. They’re going to come for us next though,” Aziraphale theorizes, then moves toward the stairs that lead up into their flat. He needs to collect go bags for them all. He looks at the two spellbooks. “We need to dispose of those before they get here.”

Crowley still seems poised to rush out but instead grabs the grimoires. Aziraphale pretends not to see the tense line of his shoulder and the discreet wipe at his watery eyes. He snaps and six electric shredders appear in a circle around him. None are plugged in, but Aziraphale doubts that will stop Crowley.

“I’ll be right up,” the demon confirms and grabs one of the spellbooks from Aziraphale’s desk. “Look around and see if we still have some blade that will flame, won’t you?”

Effortlessly, he rips the pages from the binding and then separates the pages into sections. The shredders whirl to life and chow down, only slowing when too many pages are fed in at once. Aziraphale allows this to be his soundtrack as he climbs the spiral stairs.

“Will we need to do the same with all the books?” he asks, glancing down at the girl in his arms.

She’s tired, but trying for alert. She looks up at him and gives a distinct attempt at a nod which looks more like a flop. Aziraphale reacts with a frightened yelp and cradles her head better.

“Is it anything from Summergrove Hall also infused with magic?”

She tilts her head in an attempt at a shake. This movement, the jump through space and time, and the former snack make her give an impressively loud blast of wind. Her eyes open in alarm, but the angel chuckles.

“Nothing to apologize for, it’s perfectly natural. And thank you for telling me about the books, little one. It’s a shame to lose them, overall, but I’d rather we be safe,” he admits before turning to lean on the handrail and call down to Crowley. “All the books, Crowley, my darling. Imani says shred them all.”

Crowley appears in his line of sight at the foot of the stairs, his sunglasses pushed up onto the top of his head. His hair spikes out like spider legs.

“That’s my girl,” Crowley says with pride. Imani shrinks back in surprise. Crowley carries on while gesticulating. “I’m going to teach you _proper_ magic, Imani. No more of this ritual shit, fledging mine,” his eyes suddenly widen. “And none of Baba’s stupid illusions! He’ll be pulling dead doves out of your ear if you’d let him!”

Aziraphale sputters, “I would never! The dove only was dead for a moment anyway due to a gross oversight—I mean all that excitement with the birthday party and the thrown cake. The guns caused my focus to slip—“

Crowley rolls his bright yellow eyes and the shredders all rumble on like truck engines. “Sure. Only I thought they reinforced certain arguments?”

The angel pouts and directs his next comment to Imani. “Nonny is impossible.” 

Just then, something changes. Imani squawks in alarm and her eyes cast about in fear. 

“ _Angel!_ ” Crowley shouts in a hoarse cry. Aziraphale does not hesitate. That is not a tone that Crowley employs often and it does not bode well. 

With one snap the upper floor of the bookshop and flat disappear. Aziraphale jumps over the handrail at the same moment. He holds Imani safely to his chest, even more securely than their time on the swing, as his massive white wings pierce reality’s boundaries. He gives three great flaps and their descent slows. He lands gently in a crouch. Aziraphale stretches these same wings and feels the early signs of muscle strain. 

At his side, scales ripple across Crowley’s exposed skin. Black and red plates flash up his throat and across the backs of his hands. His eyes lack any white; his unblinking, yellow pupils focus on the front door to the shop. 

Gabriel stands there holding Beelzebub’s limp form in his arms like a bride. Red blood soaks into the angel’s otherwise pristine suit like paint. His face is contorted into panic and despair.

“Aziraphale! Demon! Help!” he cries and he appears to be trembling. 

“Let him in,” Aziraphale decides, noting Crowley’s indecision.

“It might be a trap,” Crowley argues.

“Gabriel’s not that cunning. Either way, we might be able to save Beelzebub,” Aziraphale decides and looks directly at Crowley’s trembling left hand. 

Crowley raises this hand and waits until he catches Aziraphale’s gaze. “Are you sure?”

Aziraphale nods sharply and Imani gives a frightened cry. He shushes and bounces her as Crowley snaps. The doors to the shop fly open and usher Gabriel in. They slam shut immediately behind him. A barricade of bookshelves slide into the doorway and form a wall. Crowley steps between his family and the new arrivals. 

The archangel ignores them all. He focuses on smoothly laying Beezlebub down on the sofa. He pushes their hair back from their forehead and the demon groans. Gabriel’s voice trembles when he speaks.

“Sandalphon usurped my role and declared me no longer an archangel. Uriel departed to find Michael; she thinks my powers will return in time. While they were gone, Sandalphon decided that the enchantress is a danger to Heaven. He’s coming for the fledgling—“

Outside the bookshop bolt after bolt of lightning strikes the street. People scream. Some run away from the flashes, while others grab their mobiles to film the strange natural phenomenon. Glass shatters from the ricocheting thunder. The sun still shines in a bright blue summer sky, but in that intersection, a cloudless storm rages. 

Gabriel’s words come out tight and thick from his throat, “Beelzebub was in the park where I jog. I went to them to warn you all. Sandalphon followed the combination of holy and damned auras; he thought he found you. He found us instead. He wanted to punish me. He hurt them and I couldn’t even stop him. When they wouldn’t tell him where the fledgling was… I think they’re dying.” Gabriel’s voice cracks, “I can’t heal them. I just…my miracle… it burned them—“

“Yeah,” Crowley admits and shoves past him, “it does that.” 

As Crowley gets closer, Aziraphale feels his heart pound wildly. Gabriel could still be a trap. Crowley might be in danger.

“You have to help them!” the archangel cries, but Aziraphale musters his power just in case. 

Gabriel wrings his hands and drops his to knees beside the sofa as Crowley examines the prince. He hovers over Beelzebub before pressing both his palms onto them. He mutters some sort of apology before placing his hands in the same positions of an AED; he flattens his left hand over their right ribs and his right palm over their heart—somewhat squishing their breast. Then with a focus and a hiss, he forces magic into them.

Beelzebub instantly begins to scream in agony. Gabriel and Imani both whimper. Aziraphale bundles Imani’s swaddle tighter and tucks her closer. 

“It’s all right, little one,” he promises in a soothing tone. “Nonny hung stars and cared for little fledglings like you. He has healed many wounds.”

Outside, more lightning crackles and Aziraphale can see Sandalphon and his warriors step out of the last bolt. Humans either cry in alarm or continue to film this miracle.

Once he’s seen the number of the warriors, Aziraphale folds the bookshop’s actual space on itself without shrinking it. Physics may be Crowley’s favorite part of magic, but he’s taught the angel a thing of two in six thousand years. This gives less solid area for the wards to protect. Removing the temporary guest quarters and their flat helped too. 

“They’re here,” he warns when this is finished. He cups his hand around Imani’s soft head and her knit cap. 

From the sofa, the prince gives a heaving shout that might be better classified as a grunt of pain. Crowley falls away from Beelzebub like he’s been electrocuted. In his place, Gabriel surges forward to check them. Beelzebub gives a wounded exhale and then tries to roll on their side. Gabriel holds them still and strokes their hair and cheek.

“I’m here, I’m here,” he repeats, with the same adoration that Aziraphale knows well. The tone has rolled off Crowley’s tongue for centuries and he’d ignored it. This is not the time for mourning lost years, however.

He chances another glance toward the street. Sandalphon decides that the wards around the door are not worth testing and begins to stride down the long wall of windows. Other angels linger in the street. Some look around at humanity or the sky in unhidden gawking. This might be their first time out of Heaven. Some angels threaten the mortals with their holy weapons in fear. What a strange difference between the two groups, Aziraphale thinks. 

He remembers his and Crowley’s first day on Earth and looks down at Imani. She’s giving a low, steady whine. Her brow is scrunched into waves of wrinkles. He decides to take her mind off of it. “Nonny and I met in the Garden on Eden,” he offers, his volume low. She looks up in interest, but her brow does not smooth. “It rained that day.”

Crowley uses the arm of the sofa to stand, but it’s tactical. He’s not drained. Aziraphale can feel his partner’s protective energy sparking around the wards. Without pause, Crowley snaps and the rest of the Summergrove Hall books disassemble and leap suicidally into the paper shredders. Then he stands straight and rolls his neck as if it has extra vertebrae.

“He tempted Eve, you know,” Aziraphale continues, a bit boastfully. He watches Crowley move with unbridled pride and devotion. 

“I more pointed her toward the apples,” Crowley hisses and counts the pages that slide through the shredders' teeth.

“Of course he never wanted to hurt her. He believes we should all have access to knowledge. If you’d wanted to pursue magic without hurting someone, he’d have helped you,” the angel continues. He tries to continue to speak soothingly, even while he watches one of Sandalphon’s lackeys point their spear at the shop walls. The wards growl and rumble. 

Imani shivers in her blanket and Aziraphale shifts her closer so he can pull the back of it up over the back of her neck.

“I was to guard the tree, but, you see, I saw a family of deer for the first time,” he pauses to watch another angel join the first in threatening the shop’s wall.

Crowley takes this chance to interject. “They were Springbok, Imani, not deer. For as much as he loves books, he can’t tell a story worth a damn. Just wait for bedtime stories, fledgling, they’ll be completely impossible to follow.” 

Even as he says this, Crowley tries to hold onto his mortal shape. Much like on the airstrip, his outline vibrates between human and serpentine forms. His thin, forked tongue tastes the air in quick pulses. “On our first date, Baba gave the mortals his literally-God-given flaming sword away.”

“That was after Adam and Eve had been cast out. Nonny introduced himself then, but it was hardly to pay court to me!” 

Crowley slows and stares at the angel with a flirty smile. “Why do you think I slithered over? Just to chat? Nah, you were gorgeous. I knew you were for me,” Crowley’s smile softens. Aziraphale stares back, in surprise. 

“You wiley, old thing,” he says in quiet amazement. Then, as Crowley leans over to press a kiss to his cheek, Aziraphale sees the warriors by the glass with a soldier’s appraisal. “They’re about to charge, Crowley.”

Sandalphon tilts his bald head at the shop glass as in a challenge. But nothing changes. Crowley leans Aziraphale’s expertise. He kisses Aziraphale again, taps his finger on Imani’s nose, then strides over to Gabriel. He points to the center of the angel’s back.

“C’mon, Fuckfeathers,” he encourages, and Beelzebub makes a displeased growl from their place on the sofa, “suit up. We’re about to be in a battle.” 

Gabriel glances out to the street, then down at Beelzebub, before noting Aziraphale’s bared wings and Crowley’s shape. Gabriel seems to find his blurred edges fascinating. This is something Aziraphale agrees with, but a flash of possessiveness burns through him to see Gabriel studying his partner. From the sofa, Beelzebub tries to sit up.

“You need to rest,” Gabriel coddles and he moves in front of them. Six shining wings flash into existence. 

Crowley examines them and hums. “I think you’re still an archangel, there, Gabby.” 

A flash of annoyance stains the angel’s handsome face. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why not? It sort of suits you. Anyhow, Bee won’t let me call you ‘Fuckfeathers’ anymore,” Crowley expands as he prowls back to Aziraphale’s side protectively. “I guess I’ll just yell ‘hey you’?”

“Just call me the name that the Almighty gave me, demon,” Gabriel snaps.

“Not as long as you keep calling me that, you pillock,” Crowley growls back, his tongue flicks out dangerously. “Not that I care what Mother calls you. She doesn’t take my calls."

Aziraphale sees the immediate reaction Gabriel has to anyone referring to the Lord as “mother”. His jaw tenses. Then he drops the subject. Instead, he points at the sofa and Beelzebub, and it obediently walks backward in the shop, each little wooden foot moving like an animal’s leg. It continues to walk until it's a safer distance from the wall of windows. The prince shifts to a semi-leaning position. They look concussed.

“Smite him,” they buzz, attempting a glare at Sandalphon, but their words are slurred and slow. 

“Yes, sweetheart,” Gabriel agrees and he stands up straighter. His spear materializes in his hand along with his holy mirror. 

“Your hair looks fine,” Beelzebub groans, and Gabriel offers a sardonic smirk back at them before arming himself with the mirror as if it were a shield. Its appearance makes a few of the angels look alarmed. 

While Gabriel is posturing, Sandalphon calls. “We offer amnesty! Send out the fledgling forged from Hellfire by the witch!”

“That’s a mouthful,” Beelzebub buzz and try to sit up again. They blink dizzily. 

Crowley speaks to Aziraphale. “When the wards fall, get out of here.”

“What? Absolutely not—“

“ _Angel_ ,” the demon begins and layers of emotion infuse into his words, “you have to protect our daughter. Take Imani and run. I’ll come after you as soon as I can.” 

Aziraphale’s voice strangles on the words of a long-rehearsed argument, “They’ll destroy you.”

Crowley’s eyes blaze and for a moment they're not just serpentine yellow but lit with the fires of the stars and sulfur pits of Hell. Aziraphale’s heart stutters. 

“What do you think they’ll do to her?” he hisses. “Protect our baby, Aziraphale.”

Imani kicks and fusses. Aziraphale cannot look away from Crowley but clucks at her absently. 

“I will,” he eventually promises, but his voice wobbles. Imani screams in dismay. 

Crowley’s devil-may-care smile returns and he leans over to find Imani’s tiny fist. She pauses her scream for a moment as he brings it to his lips in a kiss.

“Be good for Baba, fledgling mine,” he whispers and Aziraphale opens his mouth to protest again. 

He’s the soldier after all! Crowley is the creator and carer. He was never meant for the battlefield, no matter how many human wars that Hell forced him into. There is no time to say any of this because the wards rumble and then fail. The huge Edwardian glass windows shatter. Crowley’s eyes flash like lightning and Hellfire blazes down his arms and circles his fists.

“Aziraphale, go!” he shouts and turns to face the angelic warriors who rush into the shop.

He can’t move though. It’s like the world is moving in slow motion. Beelzebub struggles to get off the sofa and fight. Instead, they only succeed in half morphing their left side into a swam of flies and burning a hole into the sofa cushion with Hellfire from their right. Gabriel’s mighty wings flap and drive back the lesser angels. The wind they generate throws them back out the open windows into the street. 

Crowley, however, shakes out his red hair and lets the skin at his temples turn to scales. Fire rings him as he shifts in that strangle middle ground between snake and human. Sandalphon rushes at him and slashes forward with his sword. Crowley parries the incoming blow by casting a ball of Hellfire at him.

“Good Lord,” Aziraphale whispers. Crowley is terrible in swordplay _when_ he has a sword, only now he’s going into this unarmed. With one snap of his fingers, Imani’s sling appears around the angel’s chest. He settles the infant there. “Hold on, my little one, Nonny needs help. He’s hopeless with a sword, I’m afraid. We’ll have to rescue him.” 

Before he can think it into existence, however, a heavy, but well-weighted sword is in his hand. Confused, he blinks at the blade and then down at Imani. She stares hard up at him then winks. 

“Right, then.” And he dives into battle. His wings power his first thrust and he forces two angels to retreat. One of them might even be assigned to his Armageddon platoon, he thinks. So much for loyalty. 

“Get out of my shop!” he shouts. Imani roars a baby yell as an echo.

“Angel!” Crowley hisses, but then narrowly dodges Sandalphon’s blade. 

Aziraphale jumps in and his sword clashes with Sandalphon’s. He might be a little rusty, but he was formed to be a warrior. Sandalphon was designed to lead choirs. He draws and cuts like he’s conducting. Aziraphale immediately drives him back three steps. In that retreat, however, Sandalphon sees Imani.

“There is the abomination!” the bald angel shouts. “Hand it over, traitor.”

“Don’t speak about my daughter that way,” Aziraphale sneers and drives his blade forward with a powerful flap of his wings. 

Sandalphon tries to dodge, but as he does he makes a desperate swipe. He may have been aiming for the fledgling, her sling, or Aziraphale. Crowley dives in between them and his blade pierces Crowley’s ribs. If he’d only been in his mortal frame, it might have only been a laceration. However, his frame flickers between the Serpent of Eden, Crowley the Fallen Angel, and a lantern of Hellfire. The holy blade pulses through his demonic nature and Crowley gasps.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale shouts, in horror. He nearly drops his sword, but Sandalphon leaps forward, his blade aimed at Imani. 

Without pause, Crowley unfurls his wings into the physical plane with a crack. With a form completely chosen, his magic converges and he draws Hellfire together into a single flame. He quickly touches Aziraphale’s blade. They’ve been their own side for longer than they’ve ever admitted. They move together toward one goal without discussion.

The blade flames like the same sword he was given back in Eden, only now Aziraphale’s burns with Hellfire. With one smooth thrust, he drives it into Sandalphon’s middle. His eyes widen for a split second before his very core ignites. Aziraphale ignores his agony and grabs Crowley and drags him backward. The demon clutches his ribs and tries to hide his injury by drawing his wing over his right side. 

“Good aim,” he jests, but sweat runs down his face, and scales break out like hives along his throat. The white is gone from his eyes. His canines sharpen and bite into his lower lip. His skin smokes as holy light seeps out of the wound under his hand and feathers. 

“Angel,” he groans and tries to smile. Tears run down his cheeks. Aziraphale grabs him tightly and tucks him against him. Imani is cradled between them, like their first night together, only this time, Crowley is dying. Even still, love pours off him and wraps around them. Aziraphale’s hands shake.

“I can heal you. Let me try, my dearest, please let me try—“ he cries, his words shaking as much as his limbs. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says with open affection, “raise our little girl, yeah? Make sure she knows how much I loved you and how much I wanted to be her Nonny. This is the dream I had for us, angel. A family. And I got it.” 

The power from the holy weapon burns through his wing feathers and his very being is turning to dust around Aziraphale’s hands. Already his right torso is dissolving into the ether.

“No, no, Crowley,” Aziraphale begs, his voice tight and laced with tears. “Stay here, don’t go.” He tries to focus his magic and force healing miracles into the demon. It only makes Crowley gasp in pain and writhe even more in his arms. The angel pulls back his power and presses kiss after kiss to Crowley’s forehead, nose, and cheeks instead. “Don’t go, my heart’s darling. Stay and help me raise our baby.”

Imani gives a heart-wrenching cry, which joins her lamentations to Aziraphale’s. Crowley shakes as if he’s coming apart and groans, all while trying to contain this noise. 

“Love you,” he manages as he bites down on his lip until blood runs with his tears.

Then Imani shrieks and her downy wings loose from their fabric prison. Her voice rumbles through the building with angelic intent. It’s holy and comes from beyond her physical body.

_Grandmother, save my Nonny._

The walls shake. Humans all around London recoil and shield their heads without knowing why. The fledgling seeks out her Mother’s direct attention—the first infant angel to do so since before the Fall. Every angel, holy or fallen, freezes and holds their breath. They wait to feel the Almighty’s eye turn to Earth for the first time in millenniums. 

_I’ll be the ritual’s sacrifice!_

Her immortal voice shouts and begs. It rocks the very tracks of the Underground. In the late afternoon, the sun hides behind a cloud that was not there moments before. Static electricity builds up. All over the world people feel this in the hair or the painful discharge as they touch metal. Crowley, a fallen angel and builder, panics.

“No,” he argues, his voice weak but determined. “No, baby, stay here. Grow up loved. We promised you a second chance.” His words hiss and bleed together, like the wound in his side. 

Aziraphale presses another kiss to Crowley’s temple before he lifts Imani from her sling and lays her across the demon’s chest. He tried to ignore how much of Crowley’s physical body is already faded away; there is less to hold onto than usual. He wraps them in his arms and pulls them closer, even as it bends one of Crowley’s jet wings awkwardly. 

Crowley gives a rattling cough and Imani’s voice rings out, angelic and angry.

_I am the willing sacrifice. Save my Nonny!_

Aziraphale has never done well in moments of panic. He says things that he does not mean. In the past, he’s claimed that he did not like or even know Crowley, or that they were not on the same side. Maybe after all those moments of intense panic, he’s learned something.

“I love you, my darlings,” he whispers. “How I love you.”

Imani gives a shriek of anger, which quickly morphs into something like triumph. The remains of the physically shrunken bookshop fill with holy light and power as it pours out of Imani’s tiny frame. Aziraphale cries out in alarm. He’s about to lose them both!

“No,” he shouts.

Then, somehow, Beelzebub surges off the sofa.

“Get out of my way!” they shout and angels leap back to avoid their half fly, half-enraged human form. They reach up and yank something out of the glowing air and it sparkles as they tug it toward the cut in Crowley’s side.

Crowley’s face is waxen and still. He tracks Beelzebub’s movements slowly.

“We can fix this,” Beezlebub buzzes. “We’re builders, your prat, focus.”

His voice is breathy and trembling, “Not her. Won’t take her.”

“She gave it up, you idiot snake.” The glittery wisps shimmer as they touch the demon’s fingers and they gasp. “Freely given sacrifice, holy shit, that’s a rush.”

The power from Imani’s gift forces Beelzebub’s form into their more human frame. They shiver. They weave the bright holy light into the dust that seeps from Crowley’s side. The glittering ribbon latches on something unseen and tugs it. Beelzebub has to pull it back and feed it into Crowley slowly.

“I’ve never made a torso,” they admit. “You get, what, ten ribs on each side? Or is that on each side?”

“Twelve per side,” one of the nameless warrior angels argues. “It’s in the human pamphlet.” He looks around uncomfortably and slides his sword into his scabbard. “What? There’s not much to read in my department.”

“Right,” Beelzebub says slowly and whips the glitter into a straight line and then shoves it into a different angle of Crowley’s side. He yells in pain. Fresh tears leech from his eyes. 

“Is she gone?” he gasps as his fingers grip Aziraphale’s coat. The angel can feel his nails digging inadvertently through the fabric and scratching his back. 

Aziraphale is not sure that he’s brave enough to look. The holy power drifts around them like sparkling confetti, but most of the light feeds into Crowley’s wound. No doubt the little fledgling is nothing but a shell now. Without a core, the physical being will fade and decay. Crowley gives another gasp and then moves his left arm to cradle Imani’s tiny body. Her wings flutter a little and she throws back her head and screams.

Everyone in the shop stops in surprise. 

“Imani?” Aziraphale gasps and reaches out his fingers to brush her mind. He jerks back in surprise. “Oh my.” 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is breastfeeding in this chapter, so if that's not your cup of tea--head's up.

The setting sun slips behind the occasional cloud and birds trill all around. The Cotswolds are charming and calm—the perfect place for a holiday. Their holiday cottage is not far from Bath or its famous Pump Room. Beelzebub declared it disgusting and forced Gabriel to return at least twice. 

Aziraphale planned this holiday for the pair of demons to regain their strength. Beelzebub didn’t do too poor of a job knitting Crowley a new torso and corporation parts, especially without a pattern, but the holy burns linger. He tires easily. Beelzebub themselves are not much better off. Their magic returns at an even slower pace than after they were rescued from Summergrove Hall. Privately, Crowley doubts they’ll ever regain all their abilities.

The angels must think the same. Gabriel is a positive menace. He dotes to the point of suffocating. And Aziraphale festers in his own guilt. This means he dithers and apologizes incessantly. He’s always been a gift-giver; one only needs to look to a certain flaming sword for evidence. His gifts are usually small and thoughtful. Sometimes, however, they grow into monsters, especially if driven by his low mood.

The cottage and tall green hedges are evidence of this. Additionally, he seems to think they all need more comfort. What started as a moderate AirBnB with a dying garden is now pure luxury suitable for a country garden magazine. Guilt can be a living thing to the angel, no matter how much Crowley tries to convince him otherwise. Once, Crowley could drag him out of his sadness with chocolates and wine, but this is not one of those times.

At the moment, Aziraphale is wrestling with the responsibility of destroying another being. He expected to fall, he’d said after he ended an archangel. No judgment happened, so perhaps it all balances out in the Almighty's cosmic games or check sheets. Either way, it means that Aziraphale is extra particular and exacting. Crowley allows it with an assorted put upon sighs, but after six thousand years he is used to it. Beelzebub, on the other hand, is short-tempered from the two angels’ stifling care. 

Crowley drags the prince outside when it becomes too much. This afternoon, Beelzebub shares a blanket with the fledgling on the grass by the hedgerow. They’re content to sit and alternate between watching the infant and playing some word-making game on their mobile. They’re like the least attentive Victorian nanny ever.

Crowley reclines across the garden bench. He pillows his head on one arm and hides his eyes under the other. His legs stretch across Aziraphale’s lap and his bare feet dangle off the edge of the bench. He peeks out from under his elbow and watches his angel trace his ankle bones. He proceeds to knead the foot’s boney arch and Crowley grunts. He looks, knowingly, at Crowley and gives a tired smile. He will just keep giving, even if it wears himself down. Crowley has always been able to stop him and make him look after something else. Currently, though, Crowley struggles to do anything without pain, so he’s being a poor partner in his own estimation. 

It doesn’t help that they’re both grieving as well. As if he can hear this thought, Aziraphale looks to his left where the fledgling lies. Elizabeth is not Imani, which hurts. They’d come to love the angry young woman whom they’d stuffed into an infant’s shell. 

Love, Crowley is convinced, is the entire reason for living. It kept him from changing into a hate-filled demon. It improved Aziraphale’s existence. It made Adam restart the world. It healed Imani enough for her to gift love in return. He wished they could have had more time with her—no matter what a terrible demon those thoughts made him. 

Elizabeth, the immortal shell that Imani originally yanked from the ether, is nearing or is about five-months-old. Without Imani’s exact math, they have to guess. It doesn’t matter. Crowley has no idea how long it takes a fledgling to grow and mature. Every clutch he raised did so outside of the existence of time. Raising an angel might take thousands of years or just weeks—they’ll only know when it happens. 

With these restrictions, they use human growth calendars. Elizabeth is basically on time according to these. She detests tummy time and thinks peek-a-boo is the devil’s game. (It is when Crowley or Beelzebub is playing with her, but that is neither here nor there.) Where she is on her divine skill set remains a mystery. 

The fledgling lays on her back with her little wings spread out under her. Her growing feathers are gray, white, and taupe, but short and translucent as those of a young bird. She has little control of them at this age, like many fledglings before her. Crowley often runs his long fingers through them against the grain. It makes her gurgle but keeps her sheaths healthy.

She’s resting on an intricate toy that appeared at the beginning of this holiday. It is part play mat, part mobile, and part noisemaker. She kicks at the plastic piano down at her feet until some discordant notes play. Her movement makes the stuffed rattles that hang from the mobile arch shake. She seems pleased and blows a bubble. 

Aziraphale leans over and down to touch her cheek.

“Enjoying your day, Lizzie?” he asks and then notices the play mat. It has a lion, giraffe, a swarm of flies, and a black and red snake in sunglasses. Aziraphale stares at it. 

“I thought there were an alligator and butterflies?” he mutters before looking back at Crowley. 

Beelzebub snorts innocently and hides behind their mobile screen. “It needed embellishment,” they claim. “Gabriel tried to make the keyboard only play _Sound of Music_. I had to shut that down.” 

“I am grateful for that,” Aziraphale admits quickly as Crowley groans.

More out-of-tune notes play from Elizabeth’s kicking. “I will be sure to thank your Uncle Gabriel _again_ for such a lovely gift,” Aziraphale offers with sarcastic appreciation.

He pokes around the keyboard with his finger, looking for a power switch. Just like the last thirty times he has hunted, none is to be found. Crowley sits up on his elbows and sides his sunglasses on.

“Is there any way to manipulate that thing so it’s at least in tune?” he winces as he looks down at the baby playing.

“I have been assured that it was not one of Hell’s inventions. But _no_ , not that I’ve discovered anyway, so I think either you or the Prince is lying about its origin,” Aziraphale replies. 

He tilts his head over so that Crowley can stretch up and kiss him. Crowley obliges him and then winces again as the fledgling strikes another discordant note. Elizabeth seems pleased with herself for she gurgles happily. 

“We could pull the batteries,” Crowley suggests. He might throw the whole keyboard in the lake while no one is looking. 

“Good luck,” Beelzebub jokes and pulls a blade of grass.

“I have already tried, my dear boy. Trust me, _someone_ insured that they’d stay in there.” Aziraphale glares as Beelzebub giggles.

Crowley sighs and snaps. The keys are suddenly in tune. It leaves him breathless and such a small miracle should not do that. 

“Oh thank you,” Aziraphale coos thankfully.

“It’ll just warp out of harmony again,” Beelzebub buzzes, probably in some sort of promise.

Crowley glares at them, then winces as his side pulls. The skin there is tight and tender. Also, he does not seem to grow scales there anymore; it’s just bare, smooth skin. He has yet to check as a serpent. No doubt Aziraphale would look for him, but Crowley isn’t sure he’s strong enough to maintain a neutral expression if his partner told him the bad news.

Aziraphale reaches over and gently rubs the sensitive skin there when he sees Crowley grimace. His fingers are featherlight when he asks, “All right, my darling?” 

Crowley tries to smirk, but his lips do not quark. He can’t even lie well anymore. “Yeah,” he finally agrees, “the sun’s nice.”

They share another kiss and Beelzebub huffs. They jump up and head into the cottage. They leave the top portion of the Dutch door open so that their conversation drifts into the garden. 

“Sweetheart, I just read a blog about Ontario,” Gabriel oozes from inside. No matter where he is or how close other people are, he tends to project as if he’s presenting an important sales pitch.

“Sounds cold. I vote Caracas.”

“Uneven roads are no good for jogging. Xi’an!”

“Ugh, no, I spent way too many years popping up there to deal with the shitty Silk Road merchants. They always wanted to sell their souls to make a deal and be rich. How about Luanda?”

“In Angola? Nope, can’t. I don’t speak Portuguese.”

“You’re a fucking angel. You could miracle it!”

Crowley groans. “Another round of ‘where do you want to move’ is going to kill me.”

Aziraphale slides out from under the demon and crouches down in the grass by Elizabeth. “I think we tell them to get off our island and figure it out while on the move.” Aziraphale frowns suddenly, “He hasn’t even asked Heaven yet.”

“Has he even reported Upstairs?” the demon asks, uninterested.

“He said that he’s on a ‘sabbatical’ but hasn’t let them know, as far as I know,” Aziraphale says in faux-amusement. “We should have tried that back in 800 or so.”

Crowley hums, but his mind spins. The what-if game in his mind is a dangerous thing that leads him into dark places, especially recently. Instead, he listens to the soft putter of someone’s old car on the road beyond the hedge and the hum of a dragonfly. This stillness is interrupted as Beelzebub shouts something about “not Memphis” and “give up on bloody America, will you?” before Gabriel offers “but San Diego!”. Crowley chooses to focus on Aziraphale instead. He slides a hand under Elizabeth’s neck and the small of her back.

She smiles her gummy grin when Aziraphale lifts her. If Crowley had never believed in love before, watching these two smile at each other would do him in. His chest feels tight and he can only stare. Aziraphale holds her close and safe and runs his fingers down her wing from her back to tip feathers.

“Look at this beautiful little girl of mine,” Aziraphale coos. Elizabeth babbles back to him in cheerful single syllables. He kisses her chubby cheeks and she squeals with delight.

This is everything that he never thought he could never have. With a sharp twinge from his side, Crowley slides down onto the ground next to them. Aziraphale lays her back onto her mat and she waves her fists in the air. The angel turns to see Crowley contemplating how this could have gone pear-shaped. Without a word, he leans his head on Crowley’s shoulder. Some of the “what ifs” drain away.

Crowley reaches over Aziraphale’s lap and touches Elizabeth’s belly. She babbles again happily. He leans on his partner and the angel wraps his arm around Crowley’s shoulders. It’s peaceful for a moment, even if the tight skin of the demon’s side pulls uncomfortably. 

The lower portion of the Dutch door swings open with a creak and the relocation row comes closer.

Gabriel’s booming voice opens with, “Denver? They’ve got skiing and biking and hiking—“

“—and weed. You might be onto something there; oh fuck that, Focus on the Family is there. I can’t handle that shit sober…”

“Actually, never mind.”

“Puerto Vallarta? They’ve got whales,” Beelzebub suggests.

“What do whales have to do with _anything_ , sweetheart?”

“I like whales.” Beelzebub drops onto the bench where Crowley had been sitting and holds out a bottle of white wine. “Is this one ok for drinking at a quarter to six?”

Crowley shrugs. “Sure.”

“How about Seoul?” Gabriel offers, thoughtfully. 

“It’s not America,” Aziraphale offers helpfully. To Crowley, who knows every hidden turn of his angel’s passive-aggressive nature, it just screams “get out of the UK”.

Interestingly, Beelzebub does not dismiss it outright and instead considers it. “Seoul has some options.”

“We could go visit?” the archangel offers as he spins the corkscrew into the wine cork.

Elizabeth waves her fists and wiggles around on her mat so her stuffed toys rattle on their mobile. Crowley snaps and four wine glasses appear. Gabriel pours one for Beelzebub, then one for Crowley and Aziraphale. He does not ingest food or beverage often, but tonight he pours a tiny amount of wine into his glass. Crowley watches him swirl it in the glass and sniff it. That seems to satisfy him because he sets the glass down again. 

Just like the perfect fucking angel, Crowley internally rages. Never questioned. Never stepped out of line, but reaped all the benefits from Aziraphale dangerously doing so. Gabriel would have murdered the best angel Heaven ever had just for loving Creation too much. That same bullheadedness would have destroyed another just for being pulled from the firmament as a fledgling. And here he was, openly falling in love with a demon, all while on “sabbatical” without any danger!

Exhaustion and rage seep out and Crowley snaps. 

“Why did She make builders if we were only going to fall?” he hisses suddenly. That was not the question he meant to ask. He’s shocked himself.

Beelzebub blinks. “She formed us to fall, you fecking git. Didn’t you get the bleeding memo?”

Aziraphale considers this and shakes his head. “That’s rubbish. The Almighty made the Host from love—“

Gabriel sucks his teeth, “Actually, no I think She did mean for the builders to fall. The Lord always said that she gave them curiosity and something like free will.” The other three stare at him. “You know, for the designs?” His brows knit. “You two remember this! I heard you do it together; you’d come up with some crazy plan and then run off to do the drafts. I didn’t always hear if they worked out—“

The idea slots into place like the click of a key in a lock. Crowley sits upright so fast that his side pulls and, as a pain reaction, his teeth length. “The notes from the ether,” he hisses. “All the notes from the ether were our bad maths and plans for ideas we created on our _own_.”

Beelzebub throws back their glass of wine and glares. “So what?”

“So we never made a fledgling. None of us know how. Those grimoires all made batshit insane jumps—someone read a blueprint about how tadpoles get air from bubbles, then pulled air from a living creature’s lungs. That’s creativity—“

“That’s psychosis,” Aziraphale argues and Crowley nods in agreement. 

“I’ve _always_ said that Hell could pack it all in. The devils are all here on Earth and humans are so much eviler than we could ever dream to be. They’ve got imaginations in spades.

“But so did we. We were just limited to our scope of understanding. The universe was too new!”

Crowley slides to his feet, his wine sloshing in his glass. 

“Most demons lost imagination. It went the way of our names. So they haven’t even thought that they _could_ pull our notes from the ether. Plus, no imagination, so if they got ‘em, they wouldn’t change them.

“And the average white-winged-fuckface didn’t have any imagination, to begin with; they weren’t made that way… so who told Imani about the notes? Who gave her the idea to work with them?”

He paces around, ignoring the sparks of pain in his side. He gesticulates widely and pauses to gulp wine. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gabriel demands, his voice rising. On the other hand, Aziraphale tracks his movements with a concerned and tight twist to his face.

“She wouldn’t have,” he says slowly, with dawning horror. Crowley spins mid-stride and faces his lover.

“Seems strange, right?” Crowley expands, taking in Aziraphale’s broken expression and dull eyes. “Especially after so many years hands-off.”

Beelzebub pours additional wine into their glass and tips it toward Elizabeth. “She always was a bitch about details. Maybe she wanted an outcome to come out of all this—“

Gabriel snarls, “The Almighty would never do something so infused with so much—“

“With what? Hate? Like any of the battles She waged? Cunning? Like family planning through drunken, consent-free incest? Anger? Because I remember the Flood. I watched all the animals struggle to get to higher ground and the people try to shove their children onto roofs to avoid the rising water. I remember Her ‘promise’ but I remember the smell and the floating bodies more. So don’t you fucking tell me She would never do anything like that.” Crowley shouts until the wine’s ABV raises. He tosses it back and it refills itself. 

Gabriel glares with shining purple eyes. Crowley should feel a flicker of alarm. Instead, he just lets his canines sharpen and gives him a feral grin in return. 

“I’ve been on Earth a lot longer than you, Fuckfeathers. I’ve seen what She does to Her ‘chosen people’ and all the other ones besides. I’ve seen Hell and I’ve seen humanity at its worst. That’s all _Her_ imagination,” he declares and holds still with snake-like grace.

“Remember this, Demon,” Gabriel snaps and it holds an element of Holy power. Aziraphale tenses and rolls up to his knees, ready to stand. “She spoke to me directly. She wanted to return to a ‘natural order’ of things! It’s the first time She’s spoken to me in eons.”

“And what a charming reunion it was,” Crowley interrupts. He spins around and leers at the sky with his back arched. He screams heavenward, “This was _your_ idea? Give the angel and the demon their family but at the cost of so many souls? We can’t have a happy ending with all the blood and gore, now can we?”

Aziraphale grabs him from behind and pulls him into his chest. He tucks Crowley’s head under his chin and Crowley’s sunglasses groan under the pressure. 

“Enough of that, my love.”

“Just like Isaac. Just like Jephthah's little girl. And Yeshua… all died for Her and some fancy, elaborate plan.” He feels the air in his lungs burning to be freed. He laments, "Did She make me like this? Did She make Imani too? If She wanted fledglings, then She should have just made some,” his voice thickens with anger and the threat of tears. “She didn’t need to strike Imani down.”

Beelzebub studies their glass. “She said that Imani was against nature. At the time I thought it was her magic, but now I think it was the way she was storing her power between two bodies.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Crowley admits, as he pulls off his sunglasses and wipes his eyes. “It’s done. She’s killed another human that could have been good.”

Gabriel huffs. “I will not sit here and listen to some of Hell’s filth rail against the Holy order and the Great Plan.”

Beelzebub slams their wine glass down on the stone bench. It shatters and wine spills out. 

“Hell’s filth?” they spit. Gabriel ignores them and continues to glare.

“To rage against all that is the Lord’s plan! Knowing that he’s been thrown from Heaven for—“

Aziraphale tightens his hold on Crowley and the demon feels him suck in air to begin his fierce rebuttal. Beelzebub charges in first.

“ _Doing his job_. I was there when She cast us out, remember? I _begged_ for absolution and She ripped my name from my chest and dropped me out of Heaven. We were in the nursery. He was there caring for the little ones, while the rest of us went to war. He was holding the damn fledglings when it happened. So tell me? Why did She kick out the one builder who was doing his damn job?”

Gabriel’s mouth falls open and then snaps shut. He repeats this twice. Beelzebub’s edges blur like a swarm of writhing maggots. 

“Make your fucking choice, Gabriel,” they buzz, angrily. “Are you loyal to Heaven—who tried to _kill_ me—or are you going to cut ties?”

Gabriel stands there, glaring, but silent. “I am Her servant.” And just like that, his powers completely restore and he pops out of their sight and plain of reality.

Beelzebub sinks back onto the bench and stares blankly at the point where he had been standing. 

“I shouldn’t be surprised.” Their words extend with each “s” droning like a hive of bees. They sit, frozen. Crowley squeezes Aziraphale and hides his face in the angel’s neck.

“He’s an archangel,” Aziraphale placates, “but he’s wrong.”

“I wasn’t doing my job,” Crowley interjects, the words bubbling out of him before Aziraphale can expand. “I was avoiding the battle. I didn’t want to fight and whoever was on shift in the nursery was gone—“

“—Yeah, but you liked the fledglings. The rest of us sort of suffered through it,” Beelzebub hums before waving their hand over the shattered wine glass. It disappears. 

Elizabeth grunts in a manner that suggests she’s winding up to complain. Crowley slides free of Aziraphale’s hold and crouches down to lift his daughter. She grumbles at first but quiets against his chest. 

“If it’s all right with you,” Beelzebub finally mutters, “I’m going to take a walk.” 

They don’t wait for acknowledgment, but dust off their knees and walk purposefully toward the garden gate. Crowley kneels in the grass, watching their dark head disappear into the field beyond. Aziraphale fidgets with his waistcoat buttons. 

“I was thinking that we might head back to London,” he finally suggests.

Crowley nods. “We could go for dinner.”

“I am craving a curry,” Aziraphale admits. “Do you think that they’ve had Indian?”

Crowley snaps and their items neatly pack into their cases and move back to the bookshop. The Bentley, shining from its parking spot, perks up like a dog at the sight of a tennis ball. 

“Couldn’t say,” Crowley admits, rocking Elizabeth incrementally. “I could go for some naan. And a gin and tonic. Or three.”

“Mmm, that does sound tempting,” Aziraphale hums. 

Elizabeth’s grumbles are beginning to sound like they’ll become cries, so Crowley climbs to his feet. 

“Someone must also be thinking of food,” the angel teases and Crowley tugs him close. The fledgling nestles between them and begins to scream.

Aziraphale kisses the crown of her head and then Crowley’s lips. It’s soft and domestic in a way that his dreams had never imagined. He slips his hand under Aziraphale’s waistcoat and rubs his thumb across the starched cotton of his shirt.

“If She did this for us,” Crowley begins, but Aziraphale touches his mouth with his fingers.

“No matter how it happened, we’re together. Now, I’m not sure that just a meal of love is going to satisfy this one. I believe she’s looking forward to a bottle and that rocking chair by the fireplace,” the angel encourages and begins to lead them into the house.

Elizabeth is inconsolable when Crowley sinks into the rocking chair. He groans at the skin at his side pulls. Aziraphale hands him the bottle from the kitchen counter. 

“She gets those dramatics from you,” Aziraphale teases as Crowley convinces her to latch onto the bottle.

Immediately, she’s silenced to just little grunts as she tugs on the nipple. Then, like everything else that day, it goes sour. Elizabeth pulls on the bottle lid, which appeared fine when miracled, but the nipple slips free. Formula splashes down into her surprised face and, after a split second of surprise, she begins to scream in earnest. Crowley holds the now empty bottle in confusion for a moment. At the same moment, Beelzebub throws open the Dutch door and launches into the room angrily.

“Oh, dear!” Aziraphale shouts and rushes to find a towel, only to collide with the prince. Both of them tumble to the floor.

It’s chaos for a moment and Crowley sits still in the middle of it. He does not blink often and feels no need to now. He thinks carefully, letting his mind move through the motions like swimming through thick air. It’s much the speed his mind moves when he’s a snake laying on a sun-warmed rock. The magic shifts around him and he changes. He reaches up to pull his tie away from his neck. The shirt shifts and expands. With a flick of his wrist, the buttons undo and he pushes back the fabric.

Breasts are strange things, he has always thought. They’re squishy but solid in a way he cannot describe. He shifts Elizabeth so that he’s holding her behind her back. She screams harder. Then, with her mouth open, he slides her right up to his left nipple and slips it between her lips. Immediately she closes her mouth in surprise and begins to suck. There’s a split second of tension and then Crowley relaxes into the rocking chair and sways slowly.

He looks up and almost laughs. Aziraphale is on the floor as if he planned to stand up from where he fell. Instead, he’s frozen where he is, watching Crowley nurse Elizabeth. His face is open and adoring but mesmerized. 

Beelzebub studies him and then rolls their eyes. “Are you going to keep the Adam’s apple too?”

Crowley shrugs. He hadn’t planned to be in a different form. He’s always shifted as he’s seen fit, whenever he felt he needed to. Aziraphale picks himself up off the floor, still completely distracted by Crowley. Without looking away, he offers his hand to Beelzebub.

“Allow me,” he offers. The prince does take his assistance but seems more amused than annoyed at the angel’s distraction. 

“Lovesick fuckers,” the grouse and head for the kitchen. 

Aziraphale comes closer, hesitantly, still watching Elizabeth nurse. 

“Oh you’re both soaked through,” he laments and with a snap, the spilled formula evaporates away. Crowley smiles in thanks. “I did not mean for you to feel compelled to change, my darling—“

Crowley cuts him off. “It’s alright, angel. It’s actually,” he searches for the right word, “soothing. Having her this close, I mean.”

“I suppose you’ll have to let me drive back to London—“

Crowley can’t help the noise of frustration that escapes him before he snaps “Fuck no!” so loudly that Elizabeth startles.

* * *

  
They are back in London and the bookshop before seven. Elizabeth is fussy; she hates the car seat. Crowley made the two and half hour drive in just about sixty minutes, but it was still too long for her. Nothing seems to settle her. She has tried to coil into a tight ball since they returned to London.

Aziraphale is on the phone with their local curry shop, “—Lamb Tikka Marsala, Butter Chicken,” he sees Crowley on the steps bouncing Elizabeth as he descends into the bookshop. “Would you like a Lassi, darling?” Aziraphale asks and puts the phone under his chin to ask.

Crowley grimaces, “I’m beginning to think she’s lactose intolerant. I best skip it tonight.”

Aziraphale frowns, “I suppose no wine than either?” He looks disappointed. 

Crowley shifts their daughter up to his shoulder and tries to calm her by patting her back. It hurts his side to do this, but she's in pain. She screams inconsolably and pulls to legs up into her stomach. Aziraphale returns to his phone takeaway order and Crowley walks around the shop, hoping to calm Elizabeth. Beelzebub focuses intently on their mobile, as they have been for hours. They glance up and frown grotesquely at the screaming fledgling.

“I don’t miss that,” they admit with a frown. 

“She’s hurting,” Crowley admits, his voice hoarse with empathy. His breasts ache and swell at her crying. He can feel the front of his shirt wetting in response. “She won’t eat.”

Beelzebub lets their mobile hand drop and then moves closer to the fledgling. 

“You think it’s the breastmilk?” They lay their hand across her tiny back and her screams settle for a moment in surprise.

Crowley leans Elizabeth so Beelzebub can see her angry face. “I had some wine. I didn’t think I’d be feeding her…” he lets his words drift away and contemplates returning his chest to the way it was. This has been a poor experiment. 

Magic pulses from Beelzebub’s fingers. Elizabeth gives a massive belch and then fills her nappy. Beelzebub nods. 

“That might help,” they decide, then return to their mobile screen.

Crowley glares. “I tried that twice.”

“You just must not have the touch,” they buzz and wiggle their fingers.

Crowley can feel it, of course. Their powers are growing again. Just that afternoon he’d been convinced that the prince would never again be that, but tonight, stewing in their spite and resentment, it swells. Behind them, Aziraphale hangs up from ordering in.

“It is on its way,” he announces, cheerfully. “I did order samosas and a lamb shank on top of our usual order, my dear,” he says to the prince. He takes a faltering step and Crowley knows he’s sensed the power change in the room too.

Beelzebub taps something on their screen, then flips it around in their hand so that Crowley can see it over the fledgling’s back. It’s the webpage for a 108 night, around-the-world luxury cruise.

“You made these,” they remind. “Your presentation was about sloth and greed and gluttony.”

Crowley nods slowly. The cruise lines of the turn of the century helped push him into Hell’s bad books after a lull of so-called “underperformance”. Of course, humans had upgraded his brainchild without additional help and turned the industry into a capitalistic dream. 

“I could get on in Southhampton,” they continue. Their words take on more of a drone as their sadness increases. “I could see the world. Find where I fit.”

Something takes hold of Crowley’s gut and twists. He knows too well the feeling of being the square peg in a circle world. “When does it depart?”

Beelzebub gives a twisted smile that might classify better as a grimace. “The day after tomorrow.”

Aziraphale twists his fingers together over his belly. “That doesn’t give Gabriel a lot of time to get his head on straight,” Aziraphale abruptly stops talking. 

Crowley watches Beelzebub’s reaction. They shake their head slowly.

“He won’t,” they say.

Someone taps on the door to the bookshop.

“That was miraculously fast,” Aziraphale declares excitedly and leaves to open up for the food delivery.

“He’s made his choice,” Beelzebub continues and swipes across their mobile screen. “He won’t need time.”

“Actually,” Aziraphale argues from the door delighted, “I believe I was incorrect. It’s the perfect amount of time. We’ll even have a chance to take you shopping before you depart.”

Aziraphale steps away from the door and allows Gabriel to enter the shop. He stands with his usual straight-backed posture, but without his trademark bravado. He seems smaller somehow. Beelzebub stares at them. Crowley carries Elizabeth away from them into his and Aziraphale’s upstairs flat.

“When Baba first bought this place it was about thirty years old. The previous owners used this room as storage. It was full of rat shit,” he admits as he pushes the door to their bedroom open. “It took some serious miracles to make it inhabitable.” 

Elizabeth is unhappy to be set on her changing table, but the nappy reeks. He strips her out of her layers and is unsurprised to find that mess has escaped its plastic prison and soaked into her onesie.

“Lovely,” he growls. 

She seems just as disgruntled and wails. He sends the messy clothes and nappy into the ether and glares into the bathroom. He hears Aziraphale on the stair as he carries her, naked, into the bathroom. The infant tub is prepared for Elizabeth, filled with the proper temperature water, and set inside the larger tub. 

“They’ve taken a walk,” the angel calls from their sitting area. “I do believe they’ve ‘booked’ a suite, however. Beelzebub asked if we’d take them to the port. I’ll just miracle the food to keep until they return.”

Crowley settles her into the plastic tub and leans her against its sloping side. It's hell on the newly knit torso, but there's nothing for it. She grumbles and her wings flex. Crowley sets to scrub her body.

“How did you get shit up your back?” he asks, wonderingly. “For somebody’s sake, it’s in your feathers.”

Aziraphale eventually wanders in to find what is keeping them. A split second of pure horror flits across his face.

“What happened to her?”

“Her stomach didn’t do well with the breastfeeding. I think I’ll be done with that,” Crowley admits. There is a waver to his voice that he is not expecting and does not appreciate. He feels like he’s failed her too.

Aziraphale sits on the edge of the tub, facing the demon. “If that’s what you want.”

Crowley shrugs and wipes a flannel across the undersides of her legs. Warm and happy, Elizabeth gives a gurgling coo.

“I’m not sure if it is. I don’t want her to feel poorly,” Crowley finally admits, before lifting her out and pouring the disgusting water down the drain. Without instruction, Aziraphale flicks on the taps and lifts the tub wand. He expects that the water will jet out at the proper temperature and with a gentle spray, so Elizabeth does not complain about this rinsing.

Wrapped in a hooded infant towel, she lays on the changing table and tries to get her toes into her mouth. Crowley chuckles and slides the nappy under her bum.

“Are you going to be a gymnast?” he asks as she gums at her toes. “Pilates instructor, perhaps?”

She’s powdered and creamed, then taped into her clean nappy. It’s time for lotion and layers of warm clothes. As he does all this, Aziraphale tenderly pats her feathers with a towel. 

“I might preen her, while you nurse,” the angel suggests. Crowley raises an eyebrow at him. This is Aziraphale’s trademark attempt at cunning. He’s freakishly intelligent, but terrible at this sort of thing. 

“While I _nurse_?” he plays along.

“I understand that this may not be a long-term solution, in light of today’s bowel mishap, but you are still,” he hums thoughtfully as he searches for an appropriate word, “producing. It would be a shame to waste what you worked so hard to make.”

Crowley leaves Elizabeth to Aziraphale. As he heads for the rocker in their room, he tugs his waistcoat off and then unbuttons his shirt. 

“If she’s sick again,” he warns but does not finish his threat.

Aziraphale follows behind, fluffing Lizzie’s downy wing feathers, “Then I shall take responsibility. In the meantime, here she is.”

A padded, ornate stool appears in front of Crowley and the angel settles on it. He offers the fledgling to Crowley with adoring reverence. The demon chuckles.

“You wanted a front-row seat?” he teases as he pushes his nipple toward the infant’s mouth. Greedily she latches on and gives an immediate and audible swallow. 

Aziraphale watches, rapt. He shakes himself out of his haze, “To preen her, yes.”

Then, with only a few pauses of distraction, Aziraphale does just that. He rubs down each shaft of a feather. Her preening oil is slow to produce at this age. Once or twice Crowley sees Aziraphale reach over his shoulder to take some of his own oil. He’d done the same in the nursery centuries ago. When Aziraphale reaches for him and leans him forward to access his gland, he shifts willingly.

“She’ll smell like our family,” the angel admits rubbing some of Crowley’s preen oil between his fingers before beginning to spread it across her tiny pin feathers. 

As if in response, she gives a small grunt of satisfaction. Crowley looks from Aziraphale’s gentle face to where Elizabeth’s tiny fingers touch the mound of Crowley’s breast. Aziraphale finishes her wings and tucks her under a small receiving blanket. Then, shamelessly, he leans his elbows onto Crowley’s knee and watches them together.

“I dreamt of this,” he admits, softly. “I think the first time was in 1193 when you were serving Queen Tamar. She had her son and you were one of her nursery maids.”

Crowley smiles sweetly and meets Aziraphale’s hazel eyes. “You know, I never could tempt her. I mean outside the divorce… and the marriage with that second human. That would have been good, except he turned out to be the saint.”

Aziraphale tilts his head, “I believe they sainted her, not him, my love.”

Crowley chuckles, softly. “I liked Tamar. She had the sharpest tongue. Reminded me of you often too,” Crowley rubs down Elizabeth’s tiny back and she gives a soft sigh. “Maybe that’s because you were advising her? Did you two row constantly?”

Aziraphale thinks back. “I was on her council, but she and I did not disagree often.” He shrugs. 

“I don’t remember seeing you in Georgia outside one of her wars or another,” Crowley admits. “Sorry, angel. You’ll have to refresh my memory.”

The angel looks disappointed. He shifts back onto his stool and fidgets uncomfortably. “I came to bless her son, not for the war at that time. I came into the room and you were singing to the baby. There was sunlight all around you. And I remember thinking, ‘there is the one I love’ and then just imagining it was our child,” Aziraphale voice is thick with grief. “I knew that I would be punished for it. I said terrible things that day all because I was in my own head.”

Crowley takes Aziraphale’s hand and clutches it. “We’re safe now.”

Aziraphale gives a watery laugh. “And here you are with our daughter. I do not deserve—“

Crowley tugs Aziraphale’s hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. “You do and a hundred thousand times more.” 

Tears slick the angel’s eyes. “All those times I denied knowing you or caring for you—“

“Shush, angel—“

“—and here you are, still—“

“Where else would I be?”

“I am sorry, my love, so sorry for hurting you.”

“Enough, Aziraphale. Angel, enough.”

He tugs him from the stool and into his lap. The rocking chair groans, but is expected to hold them both, so it does. He presses his face into the hair at Aziraphale’s temple. He ignores the tightness of the new skin over his ribs.

“In Edward’s court, I used to pretend Cecily was ours,” he whispers, brokenly. “I wet nursed her. She had white curls just like yours. You never have to apologize, angel. We’re here now. On our own side.”

Elizabeth starts to grumble and fuss. At first, Crowley thinks that she’s unhappy to share him, but he also notices that his left breast feels less full. Aziraphale shifts off his lap and wipes at his eyes while the demon burps the fledgling. Then he settles her again at his right side and allows her to latch on again. She gives a satisfied click, then a gulp and a grunt. This becomes her rhythm as she eats.

Crowley wiggles to get comfortable again and then pats his left knee. Aziraphale looks at him in unconcealed disbelief. 

“My dear boy, absolutely not.”

“C’mon, angel,” he starts flirtatiously but then changes his tone to reveal his affection. “You’re upset. I need you near.”

Hesitantly, the angel settles back into his lap and rests his head on Crowley’s shoulder. He encircles the fledgling’s ankle with his fingers. Elizabeth pauses her pattern of breathing and sucking. She gives a long sigh and then returns to her meal. Crowley rests his head on top of Aziraphale’s and hugs him.

Maybe the Almighty gave Imani the way to pull notes from the ether or maybe the idea to create a fledgling, and maybe She didn’t. He has so long believed that She is not listening that it is very hard to consider any differently.

The demon remembers Her building dismay and unease around the builders, but he also remembers Her delight when they brought new ideas to Her throne. He remembers how She called fledglings from the firmament and how She cursed him as he fell into Hell. Like everything he knows about her, her cogency is shadowed by his emotions. He gives a deep sigh and decides to stop worrying about it. She either cares or She doesn’t. Either way, Crowley finds himself with the greatest treasure ever—the family he dreamed of.

He rocks slowly. Aziraphale strokes the hair on the back of his neck and Elizabeth nurses. Outside, rain patters on the pavement. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with me for this "short story" that I used to help break through my writers block for a certain courtesan story. It turned into something I didn't expect and I enjoyed it. I hope you did too. Thank you for reading.

Beelzebub looks down into the atrium of _Queen Victoria_. In the center of the main level is a circular table. On it sits a large arrangement of Stargazer lilies. Crowley holds Elizabeth up the see these. Aziraphale stands behind them, absorbed in people watching. 

Traditionally, the four-month, around-the-world cruise did not allow people to embark after leaving England. However, miraculously, they found that they would for the first and only time in Lisbon. The angel, the demon, and their semi-mortal, semi-ethereal daughter come aboard while others are taking in Portugal’s sights. 

Aziraphale looks up and catches the prince’s eye. He gives a cheerful wave. It’s not unlike the one that he gave the prince and Gabriel while admitting whose fault the failed Apocalypse was. Beelzebub finds themselves waving confusedly in return. 

“Shall we meet for dinner?” the angel calls up the two floors that separate them. 

Beelzebub gives a hesitant nod, the buzzes off to their cabin. Gabriel isn’t there. He’s busy lifting weights or fencing or throwing pottery or swimming or something else. He is constantly in motion. Each morning he’s up with the sun for a jog around the ship, then off to the gym, and then in for a shower. Beelzebub is of a different mind. They sleep late, order room service for breakfast, attend the University of Oxford on-board lectures, play the slot machines, read books, listen to opera, soak in the pools, and enjoy afternoon tea (or cocktails). They meet in the cabin, of course. They touch, kiss, and talk. They are very different, however, and, like magnetic poles, cannot stay close for long. 

Of course, they need him now, so he isn’t here. They flop down on their perfectly made bed and sigh. If on cue, Gabriel’s key slides into the lock and the door swings open.

“The Demon and Aziraphale are here on the ship!” he exclaims.

“Yep, with the fledgling.”

Gabriel stands in the doorway confused. “You know?”

“Saw ‘em. I just wanted a latte.”

Gabriel’s face contorts as he tries to connect those two things. He steps into the cabin and lets the door fly shut. He’s in his exercise apparel and it sticks to him with perspiration. He drops a tennis racket onto the dresser and walks over to the glass door of their veranda. He toes off his shoes and looks out at the coast of Lisbon.

“We’re meeting them for dinner,” Beelzebub states.

Gabriel grimaces. “I’m not a fan of gross mat—“

“Yeah, I know. Save the speech,” they buzz then sit up to grab the hem of his elastic shorts and tug. They slide down his hips and over his knees with only that one pull. He glares, then tugs off his shirt.

“I need a shower.” He marches toward the bath and his workout gear disappears as he does. 

Beelzebub thinks for a moment that maybe, someday, some mortal will pull these from the ether. They hope they smell terrible. With that thought, they give themselves a sniff. 

“Plausible,” they decide. Gabriel needs an excuse when they join him in the shower every time. They lever themselves off the bed and strip to join Gabriel in the impossibly small shower. 

* * *

For dinner, Gabriel dresses in a navy linen suit. Beelzebub never would have believed it before these past weeks. The archangel has settled fully into his sabbatical (minus the exercise). His wardrobe reflects this. Gone are the light beiges and grays. In their place are richer colors. Beelzebub has tried to follow suit. They bought a yellow bikini—although they haven’t made it out of the cabin yet. Gabriel seems to think it needs to be untied with his teeth every time they put it on.

Beelzebub stares into their closet at the mix of clothes before grabbing clothes at random. Houndstooth print trousers and a floral print silk crop top. It’s fuchsia, which is a color that Gabriel swears is reserved for Hell, but Beelzebub has never seen it there. It sits high on their middle, exposing their navel. The archangel tosses them a sports coat and they head out to dinner.

They’re seated immediately. Beelzebub pulls out Gabriel’s chair for him and pushes it in to seat him.

“Good evening,” their waiter greets. “Your friends called down to let you know that they’re running a moment or two behind. They had to return to the nursery and check in on their little one. While you wait, would you care for some of the wine of the day?”

He lifts a bottle and offers to pour it into their glasses. Gabriel covers his with his hand and shakes his head. Beelzebub, on the other hand, indulges.

As the last drip of the pour joins their glass, Aziraphale and Crowley enter the dining room. Aziraphale is dressed in a light yellow seersucker suit and white shirt. It’s the first time Beelzebub has ever seen him unbuttoned at the throat. His blue pocket square is folded like origami and boats A.Z. embroidered in white stitching. He looks open and happy. Crowley walks on his arm. His maxi-dress is long, shimmering emerald green fabric, but leaves little to the imagination across the top with its spaghetti straps. His hair sits on top of his head in a tail and curls all about his shoulder blades.

The dining room is transfixed, not just because they’ve never seen them before (which is more than a surprise after nearly four months together), but because they radiate happiness.

“Evening,” Crowley greets as he slides into a seat. “I see there’s wine.”

The waiter produces glasses of water, menus, and a breadbasket. Aziraphale helps himself.

“Look, my dear, they shaped the butter into roses!” he exclaims and selects a dinner roll.

“So,” Gabriel begins, uncomfortably at this. He is not one for social calls. He gets right down to business, “What brought you here?”

Crowley’s sunglasses flash. Aziraphale fidgets with his butter knife. Before they can answer, the waiter reappears and takes their orders. Once he’s taken his leave, however, Crowley leans an elbow on the table and leans his chin on it. 

“The honeymoon is nearly over and you’ll have to face the world—well, Hell and Heaven—again soon. We came to negotiate.”

Aziraphale places his napkin in his lap and wiggles decidedly. “We believed that we were very clear about being left alone by Heaven and Hell. However, that came into question once Elizabeth came into our lives. Sandalphon attacked us.”

Gabriel sputters, “That was a single case—“

“And one we don’t want to be repeated,” Crowley says decidedly. “We’re here to talk terms.”

“What terms exactly?” the prince buzzes, curious.

“That which gets you and your sides to leave our family alone.”

Aziraphale tears a hunk from his bread and pinches it between his fingers. “And we mean that forever. Even if our family grows.”

Crowley jerks to look at Aziraphale so quickly that his hair swings over his shoulder and his dangling earrings hit him in the cheek. 

“Grows?” he asks in a strangled voice. 

Aziraphale drops the piece of bread and grabs Crowley’s hand instead. “Forgive me, love. There is no pressure, of course, I just assumed that it needs to be placed into the agreement in case She decides to pull someone else from the firmament. I’d hate to have to schedule these meetings every time the document needed altered to include new names.”

Crowley nods, sharply, but a high blush stains his cheeks.

Beelzebub sips their wine. “Hell will not interfere.”

“We want confirmation,” Aziraphale clarifies, also raising his glass.

Gabriel sits straighter in his chair. He gives a sleazy smile. It’s the one that Beelzebub associates with his archangel work. They haven’t seen it in weeks. Its reappearance makes them faintly nauseous. 

“That’s a large demand to make—“

The waiter appears with their first courses. The expediency of the cruise dining room and kitchen staff means these sorts of conversations will have multiple interruptions. 

Aziraphale seems delighted to see his giant prawns presented in style. “Brandied cocktail sauce,” he says with delight. “It looks scrumptious.” 

Aziraphale borrows Crowley’s spoon and samples his cream of mushroom soup. His eyebrows draw together at the first taste.

“Oh, you may enjoy that more than usual, my darling,” he determines with a second taste. Crowley reclaims his spoon and stirs his starter. 

Gabriel sips his water and Beelzebub eyes their brie and pears dispassionately. 

“As I said, Heaven felt the need to step in,” Gabriel begins, but Crowley holds up his hand. A black pearl bracelet slides down his wrist as he does so.

“Gabriel, we made you uncle to our kid,” he reminds. “We are holding you in a godparent-like role. Are you suggesting that you’d let Heaven hurt her?”

His brow is wrinkled above his dark lenses. Worry lines his mouth. Gabriel reflects a similar look.

“If my allegiance was divided, I might struggle to,” he takes a hasty sip of water, “determine which—“

“—for the love of Christ, Fuckfeathers,” Beelzebub drones, with a dramatic eye roll. “Just accept it. You like the kid and you don’t want to hurt her or any of the other ones that might show up.”

Gabriel faces them and purses his lips. “I cannot speak for all of Heaven.”

Beelzebub waves this way, “You can. You’re the head archangel. What are they going to do? Take away your fancy office?” They grab their fork and stab at his Caesar salad. 

Gabriel sputters at first but then seems to consider their words. Crowley finishes his first glass of wine and gestures for the waiter.

“Another of the same, sir?” he asks. Crowley grimaces. 

“I’d rather see the wine list.”

As the waiter races away, Crowley reclines in his seat with one elbow resting across the seat’s back. “Now, do you agree or what?”

Gabriel considers. “I still do not see this as a negotiation. What do we get from this deal?”

Aziraphale gives a delighted smile as if he has this prepared. “Allies.”

“Come again?” Beelzebub snaps.

“We are your allies. Should you need us, you could call on Crowley and me and we will come to help,” Aziraphale says with assurance. 

Beelzebub’s lettuce falls off their folk onto the table. They continue to stare openmouthed. These two have such audacity with so few chips to bargain with.

“That’s your offer?” Gabriel nearly shouts. 

With his outburst, the dining room quiets around them. At the same moment, the waiter returns, not with the wine list as requested, but with one of the most expensive wines from the list. He pours Crowley a taste. The demon sniffs it and takes a delicate sip. He raises his eyebrows, pleased, and taps the rim of the glass. The waiter pours an entire glass, then sets the bottle on the table and disappears. 

“Bee,” Crowley begins after a long swallow of a good vintage, “we created together, the four of us. We could be powerful allies.”

Beelzebub does consider this. They have been Crowley’s direct supervisor since they fell from Heaven. They drafted and crafted the universe together before that. They know he’s creative and they know he is dedicated to his work. They also know that he is ten hundred times more loyal to his angel than to his work. Such an offer would lack the power of a higher-up demon but would have his special builder skill set. And, if this protected his family, Crowley would give it his all.

Beelzebub nods, satisfied. “Done.”

Gabriel squawks, “What?”

They kick him under the table. “It’s a good deal. Hell’s in.”

The archangel looks at them mutinously. “You sure?”

“Yeah, Fuckfeathers, I am. Are you? I’d take their terms.”

Gabriel stabs a piece of romaine and lifts the fork to consider the leaf. “Fine. Heaven’s agreed.”

He sets the fork back down, lettuce uneaten.

“Excellent,” Aziraphale preens and finishes Crowley’s soup. The demon doesn’t seem bothered. He drinks his wine instead.

“Right, well,” Gabriel pushes back from the table, “I’m going to the thermal spa.”

Beelzebub grins. “Oh that’s right, I booked it for us so we can do it nude. Ta ta, fuckers,” they declare and stand. 

They grab Gabriel’s hand and lead him away with a sashay. Anyone who thought about attending the thermal spa that evening suddenly broke out in a rash. Poor mortals. Beelzebub and Gabriel truly had the various saunas, showers, and hot tubs to themselves. 

* * *

Meanwhile, Crowley and Aziraphale linger over a long dinner and nearly endless bottles of wine. 

“The nursery closes soon,” Aziraphale notes with a glance at his fob watch.

Crowley hums and leans on his elbow on the table. “Shall we finish the bottle in the room, then?” he asks.

Aziraphale nods with a twinkle in his eye. The waiters never remember to send the room charge receipt over, but find it signed all the same. They also do not notice the open bottles escorting the couple out.

Aziraphale touches the lift button without depressing it and the doors slide open to reveal an empty lift. Everyone else who stands around waiting for one decides it’s too full anyhow and looks away. Crowley steps out of his stilettos and stands barefoot on the marble floor. His skirt pools around his feet. 

“We did it, angel.”

Aziraphale chuckles, “Of course we did, my dear.”

The doors ding and slide open pneumatically. They walk in sync and comfortable silence. Crowley’s shoes swing from his hands. The nursery receptionist greets them cheerfully.

“Lizzie just had a nappy change. She’s been fussy,” the woman coos. Behind them, a security door opens and one of the nannies exits holding their daughter. She blinks sleepily at them through puffy eyes.

Aziraphale reaches for his daughter and tucks her under his chin. “Sorry, darling. Nonny and Baba needed a date night.”

Crowley takes the nappy bag from the nanny and they slip back into the hallway. The ship rises and falls with a wave. Elizabeth gives a sleepy sniffle. 

“Baba’s sorry,” Aziraphale continues. “This was about our family’s safety. I’m sorry you were upset. We’re all together now.”

They walk toward the aft of the ship and find a stairwell to climb the additional two decks. They reach their cabin. Their room steward (a very confused one at that; she swore no one was staying in 7028 this long journey) has turned down their bed and laid chocolates on their pillows. A towel sloth hangs over the side of a portable cot. No doubt Elizabeth will pull it into the bed with her when she sees it. 

Crowley latches the locks and tosses his heels into the closet before pulling the elastic from his hair. It tumbles down.

“What do you say, angel,” he says, as he drops the nappy bag on the table, “finish the bottle on the balcony?”

He flips the latches and knobs that open the sliding glass door. The warm sea air rushes in along with the sound of the ship cutting through the water. He walks out onto the veranda and looks over the side. The lights on the lower decks reflect into the water. The wash of the ship looks sapphire blue and foamy white. There are too many lights from _Queen Victoria_ to see the stars, but the moon sidles out from behind a cloud. 

Aziraphale sets the bottle on the table and settles in a chair with Lizzie on his lap. 

“What a lovely holiday,” he declares. 

He’s released the glamor over Elizabeth and her tiny wings appear again. The little feather quiver in the strong breeze. She gives a weary cry. Crowley snaps. The wine leaves his breastmilk. He shimmies out of the top of his dress and lets it hang around his hips. Next, he unclasps his bra and tosses it into the cabin through the open door. Finally, slides into the chair and holds his arms out for the fledgling.

Aziraphale slides his chair closer and takes equal pleasure in watching Crowley nursing Elizabeth and beautiful night on the sea. 

“Yes,” the angel says decisively, “this is a lovely holiday.”

Crowley smiles back at him indulgently. “You always did like Portugal.”

“You’re mistaken, my love. I liked Portugal because I only ever went to see you.”

Crowley’s cheeks heat and he ducks his head. “Love you too, angel.”

Aziraphale chuckles, “Just so, my darling. Just so.”

The ship cuts through the sea and into the first night of their family’s safety.


End file.
